The Casino Heist
by Bellmason
Summary: Like all avid GTA Online players, I've been eagerly awaiting the opening of the Casino at Vinewood Racetrack and the addition of some new Heist missions to play. The 'Opening Soon' sign and some rumours suggesting there are lines of code referring to a Casino Heist in the game got me thinking about how such a heist might be carried out. So here's my version!
1. I - The Setup

THE SETUP

The call came late one evening.

"Hey it's Lester. I just heard a casino opened up in town. Apparently it pretty fun. Maybe you wanna check it out?"

It had been a few months since me and my crew had pulled off the Pacific Standard Heist and yes, I was already bored with being a millionaire. I'd run out of things to spend my money on and I was itching for another job.

"Meet me at my factory in half an hour, oh and wear a suit." The location confirmed it; Lester's old textile factory was the place he used for planning heists, so I knew this had to be something special. I got dressed and called a cab.

When I got to the factory Lester was already waiting outside. He'd bought a brand new car, from the proceeds of our last job no doubt. He tossed me the keys and climbed into the back seat.

"Drive us to the new Casino up at the Vinewood Racetrack." The Casino had just re-opened after being closed for almost two years following a big profile robbery by a professional crew of eleven guys and I'd been hearing a lot of rumours about the new security system.

I pulled into the Casino's parking lot. Lester told me to get his wheelchair out of the trunk and he hauled himself into it with a knowing grin. Then he had me push him up the main doors and we went inside.

The first thing we saw was the main lobby security area. It looked like something at an airport check-in with a metal detector, a couple of heavies in expensive suits and more video cameras than I could count.

"Are you members?" Said the receptionist behind the desk.

"Oh, it's my first time," Lester called from his chair, "where do I sign up?"

The receptionist came around the front of the desk with a clipboard and a pen and handed them to me.

"Ignore him," said Lester, reaching up for the clipboard, "He's my helper." I was relieved that I wouldn't be forced to hand over one of my fake IDs.

The receptionist watched Lester fill out his name, address, IRS details and email. Then she printed out a gold card with his name on it and handed it to him. I pushed him through the metal detector and immediately set off the alarm. One of the heavies waved a wand over Lester and me until he was satisfied that it was the chair that had triggered the alarm and that we weren't armed, then waved us through.

I wheeled Lester around the main floor. There was a shallow ramp leading down into an ocean of slot machines, video lottery terminals and keno domes. There were side rooms with roulette wheels, blackjack tables and a bar at the back. The centrepiece though was a huge truck, a Sandking, mounted on a platform behind a row of slots with a banner proclaiming 'Seven Kings - Wins A Sandking.'

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Said Lester as he noticed me staring at the massive truck. It would make a great getaway vehicle and I pictured myself filling it with bags of cash, climbing into it with my crew and driving it straight through the main doors. As it turned out, this wasn't too far away from what we actually did, but the reality wasn't quite so easy.

We played the slots, lost a small fortune on the roulette wheels and then moved over to the blackjack tables. We also learned that there was a suite of poker rooms upstairs, but we didn't get the chance to go up there. Around two in the morning we noticed some of the staff were clocking off and Lester told me we were leaving. Once we got to the car he said,

"I need to get Paige a job in here, someone on the inside to figure out the finer details of the security system. Take my car and follow one of the dealers home. Be discreet, don't do anything, just get me an address and text me. I'll do the rest."

I took Lester's car and followed one of the blackjack dealers out to an apartment block up in Hawick. She pulled into the parking garage and I stopped across the street and pretended to take a phone call. I watched her go inside and waited for the light to come on, then I figured out the apartment number and ran across to the mail boxes to get the name. I texted all this to Lester and he called me back.

"Great, I'll tie her up with some phoney tax-evasion charge or something to get her suspended on full pay. Don't worry, nothing too serious. Once they get a look at the CV I've written up for Paige, or should I say 'Melodie', they'll be offering her the job as replacement."

More than a week went by before Lester called me again. He babbled about some stuff that was all completely over my head, but then he suggested he and Paige come over to my apartment so they could fill me in on the plan he'd come up with.

Paige Harris was Lester's go-to girl for all things hacking. She could do most of the stuff he could, but her speciality was encryption. Maybe she'd take over from him one day, assuming any of us survived the job we were about to pull.

Paige walked in still wearing her blackjack dealer's uniform, minus the waistcoat and bow-tie which she'd probably dumped somewhere the second she left work. Evidently she'd spent the last week in the Casino gathering intel on the security system, the surveillance network and the guards. She had a bunch of blurry close-up photos which she slapped onto the planning board.

"Now, this is the prize," began Lester. "These boxes are what we're going to be lifting out of the Casino," He tapped his stick onto the picture of a brown metal case. "These are the cash boxes, filled in the Counting Room and then stored in the Vault," he said.

"Each box holds about 100k," said Paige, "and there's at least twenty of them being held in the Vault at any one time."

"But, there's a problem," added Lester. Paige put up another photo. "Each box has a tracking device inside. The boxes are un-hackable in any sort of reasonable time that would let you open more than two or three of them before you were caught. You'd need so much explosive to get one of them open that you'd end up destroying the money inside. But, the good news is there's no dye packs."

"But tell him why there's no dye packs Lester," Paige glowered at him. Lester glowered back,

"Because it's dirty money." said Lester. "The whole Casino is a front for the FIB. A huge money laundering operation."

Those three letters meant the job had just got a whole lot more complicated, and the consequences of ripping off the FIB, especially ripping off money that wasn't insured or traceable, was that they'd be especially annoyed at us if we were caught, especially if we were caught after hiding the money somewhere, and they certainly wouldn't be held back by certain 'constitutional' considerations when it came to finding out what we'd done with their loot.

Then I noticed that Lester was smiling, so I knew he'd already figured this out, or maybe he'd increased the dosage of his medication again.

"Of course, all this explains the new security system, and now we know why it's there. None of this money is recoverable," said Lester. "The FIB are syphoning it from a drugs cartel in South America through the Casino into some kind of covert operations fund."

"Which might be why they really don't wanna to lose it," added Paige.

Lester opened a folder and read off a list,

"I mean this level of security is insane. It's got a military grade system that can lockdown the entire building. If anything happens there's an alarm under every table and all around the building which triggers six-inch thick steel plate over every window and door. There's even audio pickups which can hear gunshots and trigger the Lockdown."

"And there's so many swinging dicks around every corner you'd never be able to take them all out without alerting the others," added Paige.

"Right, those heavies we saw are actually mercenaries from Merryweather," said Lester. "They haven't officially been sanctioned to operate on US soil yet, but I'd guess it's another piece of the FIB covert operation. The Lockdown system means our first move has to be our last move," Lester emphasised this by resting both his hands on top of his cane, sagely. "As soon as they realise something's happening, they'll hit Lockdown. If we go in all guns blazing they hit Lockdown, if we take the pit manager hostage they hit Lockdown, if we flood the ventilation system with nerve gas they hit Lockdown."

"And that metal detector you went through can pick up electronic devices for rigging the slot machines or disabling the cameras or computer. There's a detector at the staff entrance too," said Paige.

Lester pulled a big floor plan blueprint out of a tube and tried to hang it on the wall, but he couldn't quite reach. Paige snatched it from him and attached it to the rail next to the planning board. The blueprint was of the entire floor-plan of the Casino, including the lower levels where the Counting Room connected to the Vault with an elevator. Lester stood up and strutted around the planning room.

"So you're probably thinking this job is impossible, right? Too much trouble and too risky. Even if we get into the impenetrable vault and steal the metal boxes containing the money, how do we get out without triggering any alarms or tip off any of the numerous guards, or show up on the cameras? And even if by some miracle we do get out, how do we disable the tracking devices inside the boxes without destroying all the money? Well, for every problem there is a solution, a 'saline solution' you could say, heh heh! Get it? As in 'salt water'? Saline solution?" Nobody laughed at Lester's attempted jokes, Paige just shook her head and sighed. "Uh, well anyway, the best way to open the boxes and kill the tracking devices inside, all at once, is to dump them in the ocean and take them down to crush depth. About four-hundred feet should to do it.

"So what, we dump them out at sea and come back for them?" I asked.

"We could do that, but we'd risk not being able to find them again, the trackers would go off-line. No, we're going to need a submarine, actually mini-sub. I happen to know there's one in storage at Fort Zancudo. Once the boxes have been compromised we can empty them and use the sub to get away clean. The sea water won't affect the money, we can wash it clean later, make up your own 'money laundering' jokes for that one!"

Paige started writing out a list from Lester's plan, with a photo representing each stage we'd have to complete before starting the Heist;

"Stage one, the Army Base at Fort Zancudo. To get the mini-sub out in the open so we can steal it we need to give them a reason to use it. You'll have to break in, reset the navigational beacon and bring down one of their military jets into the Land Act Reservoir." There was an aerial photo of Fort Zancudo stuck on the board next to this job.

"Stage two is to wait for the Army to investigate the crash and then go to the Reservoir and steal the mini-sub." There was another photo of the Dam to the northeast of the city with the Reservoir behind it and then two smaller photos of the mini-sub and an Army Cargobob helicopter.

"Stages three and four are all about the getaway vehicle, we're still working out the finer details, but remember that Sandking in the middle of the Casino? Well, we're going to switch it with our own, fully modded and with some hidden equipment inside. More about that later." There were no photos for this part of the plan.

Lester and Paige got up to leave and I walked with them to the door.

"I'll get the old crew back together, I'm sure they've gotten as bored with retirement as I have," I said.

"Good, get ready to move in the next two days. I'll send you all the details for the Zancudo job and what you'll need to do once the plane goes down. As for all the stuff inside the Casino, the actual Heist, most of that's going to be down to me and Paige, but we'll need you and your crew to do all the heavy lifting of course.

"You can trust us," I said. Just tell us what needs doing and we'll deliver you the goods!" I smiled.


	2. II - Fort Zancudo

II - FORT ZANCUDO

I'd learned never to question Lester's logic, but breaking in to Fort Zancudo where the mini-sub was stored and not stealing it seemed, well, kind of stupid.

"We can't just steal the sub from Zancudo," Lester told me when I asked him this very question. "We don't know where it's stored and there's a ton of support equipment that goes with it. On our own we'd never get it operational in time for the heist. No, better to get them to bring it to us, all ready to go."

The way we were going to achieve that was as convoluted as ever. First we'd steal a small jet from LSIA, fly it up the west coast, fake an engine failure and make a forced landing at the Base. Meanwhile, I'd jump out with a parachute, land somewhere near the tower and sneak into the comms room. That was the tricky part, rigging the base's Instrument Landing System so it gave out a false signal, just off by a few degrees but enough that an incoming plane would be a couple of miles away from where it thought it was. In short, we were deliberately going to cause an airplane to crash.

It took me a while to round up the crew. At first, not all of them were as enthusiastic about getting back to work as I was, but after I told them about the two-million dollar take, they were as keen as ever. Of course, I didn't tell them everything, only what they needed to know.

My crew consisted of my Sister Jane, our pilot. Wilby, an ex-army weapons expert, our sniper, and finally Stone, the heavy muscle from the mean streets of Liberty City and our explosives guy.

We all assembled in the heist planning room in my apartment and admired/criticised each other's outfits. I was dressed as an Army Colonel, Jane as a commercial pilot, Wilby as a businessman VIP and Stone was supposed to be his bodyguard. We took the elevator to my garage, then hopped into one of my many cars and went to the dinghy Lester had left for us at the Marina. That took us to the south beach behind the Airport.

We climbed our way up to the security fence at the back of the hangars. By now it was already getting dark. We ran along the fence until we found the gate and Stone got the bolt cutters on the chain holding it, then we were in.

We were looking for the small terminal building on the south side of the airport that was used for the smaller private jets. There were only a couple of security guards around and we soon dropped them with silenced pistols. We were aboard a Shamal jet in no time and Jane quickly ran through the startup sequence. I checked my parachute and my uniform. I didn't want a loose patch or missing button to give me away once I got into the base.

We cleared the boundary of the Airport before anyone had a chance to notice us taking off without clearance. After a minute or so there were frantic calls from air traffic control, but we ignored them. By the time they'd called in a stolen aircraft we would already have touched down at Zancudo.

Jane gained altitude and followed the coast. Once we were out near Fort Zancudo she shut down the port engine and made the emergency call.

"Mayday-Mayday-Mayday. Passenger Jet Lima-Sierra-Two-One-Seven-One - Engine failure. Making emergency landing at Fort Zancudo. Three persons on board."

The tower at Zancudo responded immediately.

"Aircraft calling mayday - permission to make emergency landing denied. Repeat, DO NOT LAND. Continue to Sandy Shores airfield and land there." The plane was losing height rapidly and Jane was already lining up her approach.

"Negative Zancudo Tower, we have one engine out the other is running hot. We're coming down on your main runway."

Jane tried to stay as high as possible over the main runway before we passed the tower, but when I opened the side door it hardly looked like I'd have time to get the parachute open. I jumped anyway, and pulled the ripcord as I exited the door. I held my breath as I watched the ground rushing up to meet me and felt the parachute open not much more than ten feet above the ground. It was a hard landing, but I was lucky it was on the patch of grass behind the tower. I rolled and got to my feet. I couldn't see anyone around.

Down the runway the jet's wheels squealed onto the tarmac and it coasted to a halt at the far end. I could just make out vehicles and soldiers surrounding it and a few trucks and jeeps racing down to meet it. The distraction had worked and I was able to stow my chute in a dumpster behind the tower, put on my Colonel's hat and stroll up to the security room at the base of the tower.

The two guards outside saluted me and stood to attention as I walked through the doors. Inside I met one solitary guard behind the desk, watching a bank of monitors showing the crew of the jet being escorted out of the plane at gunpoint.

The guard looked up, then stood and snapped to attention. I tried to look surprised as the sound of distant gunfire at the end of the runway erupted. We both looked at the monitor and saw one of the army jeeps exploding and several more arriving. The base alarm blared to life and I said,

"Get to it soldier, I'll cover things on this end." The security guard grabbed his rifle from under the desk and ran out the door.

I ran up the stairway. There were six flights to the top and I was already out of breath by the time I was at the third level. I knew the crew would be taking on a whole platoon of marines by now and not being there to help them made me feel even more uneasy. The longer it took me to do my part, the more danger they'd be in, so I pushed through the pain barrier and ran up the next three flights in less than a minute.

When I reached the tower, I could hear voices in the room to my left. This wasn't the room I was after, so I looked across the hallway and found the comms room. Inside were a couple of desks and a large bank of computer servers. Lester had told me what to look for and I went behind the racking to find the right machine to plug his little device into. I found it and hooked the little flash drive up, but froze as I heard two men walk into the room. They couldn't see me behind the row of servers and sat down at their desks. I couldn't just stay here indefinitely, but I also couldn't risk alerting the whole tower by shooting them.

I stepped out from behind the racking and just stood there. One of them went for his sidearm and the other grabbed the door handle.

"At ease Lieutenant," I said. "Would either of you mind explaining how I was able to gain access to this critical area completely undetected?" Each looked at the other.

"Colonel Sir? We weren't expecting you until…"

"Always expect the unexpected soldier. Where were you both?"

"Sorry sir," said the more senior of the two, "er, we went to get coffee."

"Then next time, one goes and one stays! Your CO will hear about this," I shouted, walking confidently to the door, suddenly remembering one more task I had to perform. "Oh and Lieutenant, don't you think it would be a good idea to disable the Surface to Air missile system during a training exercise? Or would you also like to be held responsible for the loss of several million dollars worth of military aircraft?"

The Lieutenant dutifully turned off the SAM system and I strolled back across the hallway to the stairs. It took everything I had to resist the urge to run, but if I gave myself away now we'd all pay the price. Once I hit the stairs I radioed in to see how the others were doing.

It turned out that I didn't need to worry. They had taken an Insurgent and Jane was now driving it around the base with Wilby in the back and Stone on the turret wreaking absolute havoc. The base was full of transport planes being loaded with supplies and vehicles and they'd driven into a hangar where one of the Titans was parked. A Rhino tank had showed up to try and stop them and fired a shell into a bunch of fuel barrels which were now burning away in the middle of the hangar. This was keeping everyone away from them while they took potshots at anything or anyone that came into the hangar. Wilby assured me that they could hold out as long as they needed to, and they'd exit the base once they saw I was airborne.

"Everything's set, the air defence system is off-line. I'm going to take one of the fighter jets," I said.

"Don't worry about us," said Wilby, "Jane's got a great idea of how to get out of the base. See you at the rendezvous point."

I walked out of the main doors and everyone was running around in total panic. There were fire crews racing to the other end of the base and everything that could move was being rushed over to deal with the incursion. It was a short walk to the sheds where the P996-Lazers were being prepped and there wasn't a single guard left on duty. I clambered into the cockpit of a jet, fired it up and blasted out of the shed, pulling back on the stick as the g-forces pressed me back into my seat. I went straight up and gained over three-thousand feet before I'd even reached the edge of the base.

I looked out below me and could see the Insurgent with Jane and the others racing out of the burning hangar, along the taxiway then back around on to the main runway. A volley of tank shells exploded around them and then hit the Shamal parked at the end. Jane didn't slow down and punched the armoured truck right through the burning wreckage. Then she hit the sloping baffles at the end of the runway, huge slatted metal structures, designed to deflect jet blasts, they were a perfect stunt ramp.

The Insurgent launched high into the air and cleared the outer fence, landing perfectly on the bank on the other side. Soon, they'd be in the Zancudo swamp and away, then all they had to do was lose the cops and switch vehicles. I flew on, out past the prison and the wind farm. I'd have to bail out of the jet somewhere over the ocean and parachute down to earth for the second time that night, but first I wanted to see if Lester's insane plan had worked.

I went up to eight-thousand feet and passed over the Dam. I gritted my teeth, pulled hard on the eject release and saw the detonation cord blow a zig-zag hole in the canopy. I was catapulted upwards while the jet, still on full throttle, flew out spiralling slowly towards the sea. My parachute opened, suddenly leaving me in the silent still air above the city and the hills.

Then, in the dim light below me I saw it. The military jet inbound from the east, right on schedule, but four or five degrees off course thanks to our little modification to base's ILS. The jet was already making its descent, thinking it was on approach, but the error took it too close to the steep hills behind the Land Act Reservoir. It clipped the top of the hill, throwing turf and metal parts into the air then exploding in bright orange flame. Both wings separated and the fuselage broke in two and slid down the hillside into the water.

I drifted down, over the surface of the reservoir, but there was no trace of an aircraft even having been there at all, save for a scar on the hill and a few rising wisps of smoke from the water. I passed over the dam itself and saw the racetrack and the casino. I landed on the other side of the hedge from the horse racing track, in the brush-land where the stream from the dam trickled into the LS River. Somehow, we'd done it. We'd initiated the first part of the plan, but I knew that even more lay ahead. The things we would have to do next would make everything we'd just accomplished look easy.


	3. III - We Dive At Dawn

WE DIVE AT DAWN

In my time I've stolen all kinds of cars; fast ones, old ones, expensive ones. And I've stolen trucks, buses, planes, and helicopters. I've even taken the occasional boat or two, but I've never, ever jacked a submarine.

It seemed that this was the part of the plan that Lester had left for us to figure out ourselves. Once the plane had gone down into the reservoir we had to move fast. As agreed, we all met up by the barrier on the back road that led up to the dam. I called Lester to tell him how everything at the base had gone, but of course he already knew.

"The helicopters with the mini-sub and the search team have just left Zancudo."

We all got into Jane's van and drove up the dirt road to the top of the dam.

"Remember," said Lester in all our earpieces, "don't take the sub until it's in the water and it's working. It's no good bringing it back here with a vital piece missing or without its fuel cells installed."

I decided to split the crew up into two teams and sent Jane and Wilby to the eastern ridge after dropping off Stone and me by the main buildings. We ran along to the western side of the reservoir to the pumping station and found a place to hide. It was already starting to get light and it wasn't many minutes until we heard the distinctive thud-thud-thud of military choppers flying in.

The Cargobob heavy lift helicopters carried the mini-sub on a hook slung under the chopper, with all its support gear and technicians inside. There were also truck loads of Marines arriving and all kinds of other Army vehicles, until the whole area looked like a smaller version of the army base. Several of the choppers unloaded and then took off again, flying around with a armed Marines hanging out the side, patrolling the perimeter.

Me and Stone decided to climb up onto the roof of the pumping station to get a better view. I could see Jane and Wilby perched on top of the opposite hill and caught a glint off Wilby's sniper scope. I radioed them on our private channel and told them not to start anything until we were ready.

The chopper carrying the sub dropped it into the water and a dinghy on the shoreline went out to it. It took a while to set it up and for one of the marines to get inside and set it up. We watched it do a couple of test dives and then the dinghy returned to the shore. I figured that the best chance to get the thing and escape would be to lift it out with one of the same Cargobobs that had flown it in, but somebody would have to be on top of it to attach the hook. That meant somebody needed to steal the sub to prevent it from diving, and all of this while coming under heavy fire. We'd need to work as a team, and we'd need to work fast, luckily two things we were very good at.

I told everyone to check their weapons and ammo and started looking for a chopper on the ground that didn't have too many Marines guarding it. Jane volunteered to be the one to take control of the sub while Wilby covered her from high up on the ridge. Meanwhile me and Stone would get the Cargobob and somehow take down the other choppers circling overhead.

I watched Jane run down the slope to the water's edge. She was by far the best swimmer of the group. She'd left all her heavy gear in the van and taken off her jacket and boots. The only weapon she had was a knife, but I knew how good Wilby was with a sniper rifle. All Jane had to do was get to the hatch on top of the sub open and lure the Marine out. Of course, Wilby couldn't risk hitting the glass on the front of the sub, or damaging it in any way or the whole thing was pointless. Jane slipped silently into the water and dove under the surface.

I signalled to Stone to move out and we sneaked over to the chopper. There was a single Marine guarding it and Stone managed to take him down quietly with his pistol. I climbed into the cockpit, put on the harness and started the engines. Stone found an RPG in the back and fired it at the chopper flying close by. He missed, but reloaded and took another shot. They were still too far away and the rockets being unguided meant Stone had almost no chance of scoring a hit. Stone repositioned to a better position inside the chopper's cargo compartment and started firing off rounds with his machine gun. I wound the rotors up to take-off speed and lifted the heavy bird off the ground.

The Marines returned fire and bullets began pinging off the outer plating of the helicopter. She was tough but she wasn't bullet proof. As several high-calibre rounds hit the engine compartment some of the engine gauges went into the red and I suddenly had my doubts that this plan was going to work at all. I flew over to where I'd last seen the sub, in time to see it pop up out of the water. Jane was trying to pry open the hatch as it surfaced, but the guy inside was somehow holding it shut. He was also powering the sub towards the shore for his mates to get a better shot at his attacker. Jane saw what he was doing and got herself around the back of the sub into cover, but I knew I had to do something quickly.

I pulled the trigger on the stick that released the hook underneath the Cargobob and flew in low, right between the mini-sub and the soldiers on the shoreline. It was a very risky strategy, but it gave Stone something to shoot at. He drew their fire away from the sub and at the same time Wilby took out the pilot in one of the choppers chasing us and it immediately went into a spin, crashing down into the reservoir behind us. As the chopper went down Stone was wreaking havoc on the ground troops. He'd lobbed out some grenades and had reduced all the army vehicles to buying wrecks. With no cover the remaining marines were easy targets for Wilby up on the hill. We'd bought ourselves some time, but I knew there was only so much damage this helicopter could take, we had to get out of here.

I hovered over the mini-sub and felt the tug of the hook connecting with the attachment on top. Then I heard Jane through me earpiece telling me I was locked on. I pulled up hard on the collective and felt the extra weight as I pulled the sub out of the water. The Cargobob's engines whined in complaint as I pulled on maximum power, but once I'd gained some height I was able to move into forward flight and gain a bit more lift.

There were still bullets flying in from the ground, but I was relieved to note that the glass in the cockpit was holding. I could smell burning oil and see thick black smoke pouring out of the turbines and every alarm was screaming out of the instrument panel, but we only had to make it to the ocean. In front of us was the hill that we needed to get over, and I pulled all the power I had to climb, but then I heard Jane shouting in my ear piece,

"We're not going to make it over the hill!" Then I realised she was still out there, hanging on to top of sub hanging underneath. I'd obviously not allowed enough clearance for the load slung below us, so I pulled to the right and made a circle as I climbed some more.

I told Stone to take a look at the underside of the helicopter. He stopped firing and grabbed the rail next to the open door then hung himself out to look.

"Yeah, sub's there with the guy still in it and Jane sitting on top of it gripping on to the cable." Then I radioed Wilby and asked him what he could see.

"You've got two choppers hot on your tail, both with armed Marines firing heavy machine guns at you! I did some damage to one of them but I couldn't take them down, sorry." I knew I had to get rid of these choppers somehow before we reached the hideout, but I couldn't pull too many sharp turns or Jane might fall off. Then I saw the wind-farm in front of me.

"Just hang on Jane," I said into the comm. "Might wanna close your eyes!"

On the second time around I cleared the hill, but the other chopper had caught up with us. As soon as the ground dropped away below us I pushed forward and picked up speed, making straight for the rows of windmills lined up in a staggered formation. There were very tight gaps between each row and the massive blades, each about five times the size and weight of our helicopter, chopped away at the edges of these gaps. Only the most insane or desperate pilot would try and follow us. Unfortunately that seemed to be the credo of one of the Army pilots who was tailing us. Stone kept firing but then let out a string of curse words at me when he realised what I was doing.

I brushed past the blade of one wind turbine by what felt like inches, then I flew right between the blades of the next by sheer luck. I dodged right to avoid the next tower and then took a path past one that wasn't turning. I heard a massive explosion behind me and looked back to see the twisted wreckage of one of the pursuing Cargobobs.

"Hey, keep your eyes on the goddam road!" Stone screamed through my headphones and I looked ahead just in time to see another wind turbine in front of me. I dodged again, but it was a tight turn. I felt the sub swing out and had to fight with the controls as the mass beneath started to swing one way then the next. I dare not ask whether Jane had been able to hang on, I would probably have lost it at that point if she'd been killed.

I turned parallel with the rows and flew us straight out of the wind farm. We were in clear air now and only a short distance from the ocean. We were just by the power station as one of the engines gave out completely and I lost most of my power. With the extra weight of the sub there was no way we could stay up and the wounded Cargobob started to drop.

"We're going down, I screamed. Got to drop the sub!" I pulled on the trigger that released the hook from its load and felt the failing helicopter get a little lighter. I hoped that momentum would be enough to get the sub into the water and watched as it broke free, with Jane still standing on top of it. I watched her dive making perfect Olympic Gold Medal winning entry into the water from what must have been fifty feet. It was the worst possible moment for the other Cargobob to show up, but that was exactly what it did. He'd flown the long way around the wind farm, but with two working engines and with no load he'd been able to catch up to us. The Marines on board opened up with heavy machine guns and started taking chunks out of our rear rotor assembly.

"Don't these guys ever give up," shouted Stone, "they must really, really not wanna lose this sub." He stopped firing and got into cover behind the bulkhead. "Come on boys, just a little closer."

We were completely out of options, the Cargobob was disintegrating around me and had more or less stopped being an aircraft. It fell out of the sky and skimmed the water, it was time to bail out. I undid my harness and kicked open the cockpit door, and caught a glimpse of Stone throwing something at the Cargobob that was still chasing us down. I watched him jump, feet first and holding his nose, but I had to stay on-board to make sure I splashed down clear of the others. I couldn't get out until the rotors had hit the water and stopped, or I'd get chopped into shark food.

At the last possible moment, just before the Cargobob hit the water, I pulled back on the stick and let the rear end take as much of the impact as possible. She skimmed along for a few feet and then the front end dropped. It was all very smooth and for a moment I simply sat there as it floated, wondering if the thing would ever sink. Then a wave hit the middle section and flooded the whole rear compartment. The pursuing Cargobob circled around and came back, right towards me, both of the Marines on board firing into the water. I took in a big breath and let the chopper pull me down.

I saw the path of the bullets entering the water all around me and decided to sink down along with the helicopter. Once all the air had gone out through the side doors and the broken windows it started to drop into the murky depths below. I scrambled free of the aircraft and dodged away from the wreckage, trying to see how far away from the surface I was. My lungs already felt like they were bursting.

Then it was there, right in front of me, four bright lights and a perfect glass bubble with Jane sitting at the controls. The mini-sub moved over my head and stopped, then a hatch in the underside opened up. I frantically swam up to the circle of quicksilver it and popped my head out into the interior of the sub, gasping. Stone pulled me up and sat me in the seat at the front next to Jane. Then he shut the hatch in the floor, screwed it shut and sat in the folding seat to the rear of the cabin. I took a good look around.

"What happened to the guy in the sub?" I asked Jane.

"He was unconscious when I found him. I dragged him out and dumped him," said Jane. "I guess that fall must've knocked him out."

"Bring us up to the surface so I can get a signal on this," said Stone. Waving the detonator switch for the sticky bomb he'd thrown.

Jane slowly eased the lever in her left hand up and released a small amount of compressed air into the ballast tanks. We rose up a little and then tilted back as she pulled the joystick in her right hand that controlled the pitch of the sub.

"Just like flying a plane huh?" I asked her. She nodded,

"Twist the left stick for throttle and the right stick for rudder. See, easy!"

We got up just below the surface of the water I could see the outline of the twin rotor chopper hovering above. Stone flicked open the safety catch on the detonator then pushed down hard on the button. The sticky bomb attached to the helicopter exploded and debris and bodies rained down into the water.

"How fast can this thing dive?" I said. Jane tugged the left lever all the way back and the tanks flooded with seawater and it felt like being in an express elevator. The huge main fuselage of the Cargobob dropped into the water above us and was illuminated briefly in the lights of the sub. A quick turn on the rudder took us out of its path and Jane levelled us off a few feet above the seabed.

Jane opened the throttle little by little until she got the hang of steering the sub around the rocks and contours of the underwater landscape. We moved out from the shoreline and found deeper water where we could no longer see anything beneath us but darkness. Jane watched the magnetic compass and guided us north. There were a lot of gauges on the control panel I recognised from my experiences as a pilot, like rate of climb/descent, bearing, speed, etc. But in place of altitude there were two gauges marked 'Depth to Bottom', and 'Depth from Surface', this latter with a red line marking our crush depth at about 480 feet. There were also readouts for the compressed air reserve, C02 levels, battery power, and all kinds of others things I didn't recognise. Whoever wound up driving this thing during the Heist would need to know it top to bottom and backwards. I would have to get Lester to let us take it out on some practise runs, if there was time.

After about twenty minutes of mucking about at the bottom of the ocean and to be sure no other Army choppers had followed us, we surfaced near the shoreline and tried to figure out where we were. I popped the hatch and climbed out to get some fresh air. Stone followed me up and we sat on top of the sub while Jane set a slow cruise speed on the surface.

"This thing is amazing," I said. "The perfect getaway vehicle." I checked the signal on my phone and called Wilby. He told me he'd got away fine, but from what he'd seen from where he was he could hardly believe we'd made it out alive. He'd gone back to the van and driven to the service area on the highway and was sitting watching the Army, police, fire-crews, FIB and ambulances all racing around trying to figure out what had happened. Then I called Lester to give him the good news.

"Great work, I knew you'd pull it off. Glad to see my faith in you wasn't misplaced! Now, bring the sub to the cove and drive it right inside the cave. Paige is waiting for you. She'll check it out and make any modifications we need for the heist."

We followed the coast up and found the inlet to the cove. It got a lot shallower as we went inland until we could hear the sandbank scraping on the bottom of the sub, but Jane just powered right over the top of it then turned towards the huge cave entrance. There, in a boat at the back, was Paige, looking as bored as ever.

"What took you so long?" She said as we floated in. We pulled up at the back of the cave, behind a large rock which stuck up in the middle. It was a good hiding place, nobody would find it here, especially if we kept it underwater and used the hatch underneath to get in and out.

Paige tied a rope around the clasp on the top and we all climbed down into the cool water inside the cave. It had been a long night and we were exhausted but we didn't care. We swam out of the cave and flopped onto the small beach. We let the heat of the morning sun dry us as we lay there and waited for Wilby to come pick us up.

I could scarcely believe half of the things we'd done, and somehow got away with, in the last few hours. They just seemed like a blur. Now, hopefully, we'd get a couple of days to rest before the next phase of the operation. I wish I knew what Lester had cooked up for us next, and hoped our luck improved a bit, but then I tried to remember why we were doing all of this. I drifted off to sleep dreaming of huge stacks of money, of fast cars, expensive yachts and of becoming the most famous, or infamous, criminal mastermind that San Andreas had ever known.


	4. IV - Altruists & Insects

ALTRUISTS & INSECTS

It was a rainy Monday morning when Lester and Paige next showed up at my apartment. I buzzed them in, put on a fresh pot of coffee and showed them into the heist planning room. Paige slapped a photograph of a disheveled looking stoner onto the whiteboard and started writing out a bunch of stuff next to it.

"This is Austin Sento." Lester began. "A while back he did a five stretch for tax evasion, but for the last couple of years he's been living up in the hills with a bunch of cultists who call themselves the 'Altruists'." I looked closely at the photo wondering what possible use this long-haired old guy in filthy clothes could be to us.

"Sento's a legend in hacking circles," said Paige. "One of the original kids who worked out how to manipulate the phone system into giving him free phone calls just by blowing a whistle he'd found in a packet of cereal." I could tell that Paige held Sento in high regard.

"His speciality is slot machines," continued Lester. "In fact, he's the only person ever to find a glitch in the Lady Luck machine, like the ones we saw inside the Casino. If we can break him out, Sento is going to win us a Sandking," explained Lester.

"Couldn't we just steal our own?" I asked.

"No, we need Sento to win the one that's in there now so the Casino will order a replacement. That replacement will be your getaway vehicle, specially prepared with a few modifications."

Paige stuck another photo up next to the one of Sento and I knew this was going to be a two-part mission.

"We're on a tight schedule, so at the same time as you're getting Sento," Lester continued, "you'll also need to collect something from a contact at the Humane Labs. After going over Paige's daily reports on the security setup in the Casino, I've been thinking about how to get you and some of your crew inside to do the job."

"They've got their own in-house maintenance team," said Paige, "so the old 'hey we came to fix the air conditioning' trick won't work."

"But, we can turn off the air conditioning and infest the building with thousands of genetically modified bugs!" Lester chuckled. "Then you guys show up as pest control with the only bug spray in the world that can kill them and we're in. Well, I mean you're in. Me and Paige will be sitting outside, but don't think we don't appreciate all your hard work." He laughed nervously as he and Paige made their way out of the planning room and back through the door to my apartment.

As usual, Lester had left the finer details of how to achieve these two tasks to me. Once they were both gone I spent the rest of the morning studying maps, doing online research and reading through old news archives. It seemed that a lot of hikers had been going missing in the mountains around the Altruist camp for years, so I reckoned the best way to get someone inside would be to get a couple of us up there with backpacks and pretend to get lost.

As for the Humane Labs, Lester had given me the name of a scientist who was willing to sell us the bugs, but to get through the security gate we'd need to source a postal van and some uniforms. There had been a spate of thefts of postal vans in Paleto Bay recently and I hoped that one more wouldn't attract too much attention from the local law enforcement. Neither task on its own would be too complicated, but as usual everything depended on putting the right people to the right tasks. After a little more planning I called up my crew to meet up at my place the next day.

I selected my Sister Jane and Stone to take on the Altruists job, while myself and Wilby would do the Humane mission. We all got changed into our outfits, checked our comms channels then headed off up the GOH to Paleto in Jane's Rancher. When we got to the side road which led up to the mountains Jane dropped us off and carried on with Stone up towards the Altruist's camp. Me and Wilby walked along the highway until I found an Oracle XS parked nearby and broke in and hot-wired it.

We cruised around Paleto looking for the Go Postal van, knowing roughly what it's daily route was. We were so busy looking for our van that we didn't really notice the nondescript SUVs positioned strategically around the town, or the guys standing beside them, but they'd noticed us. After a quarter of an hour we spotted our target by public restrooms behind the Up-n-Atom burger. We could see one guy sitting inside the van smoking a cigarette and the other at the concession stand buying hot-dogs. It was as good a time as any so we put on our masks and made our move. Wilby drove in front of the van, blocking it from pulling away, but as we jumped out the driver got spooked and hit the gas, smashing our car out of the way.

I got into the driver's seat and backed the Oracle up, pausing to let Stone get back in, then I went after the van. By the time we caught up to it we were almost back in Paleto and we had two of those SUVs on our tail. Wilby started firing, warning shots at first and then into the bodywork of the van, trying not to hit the tyres or cause too much damage. When we passed the gas station we met another of the SUVs and I realised they were IAA. It hurtled past us on the wrong side of the road and swung a handbrake turn. The driver of the postal van was now panicking and weaved all over the road, desperately trying to stop us getting past him to get a clear shot.

The van swung a tight right hander into a side street and then left into another, dodging the traffic. I mounted the kerb, smashed into a light pole, a bench, then a stop sign, sending debris flying everywhere. People ran into and from shop doorways, away from us and into our path. They screamed, they ran, they fell over then they got back up to do it all over again, just like the chickens that this town was so famous for.

By the time we'd made our second lap of the Fire Station, four IAA cars were behind us. Taking the van without completely wrecking it was going to be almost impossible, I was considering aborting.

"We need to box him in somewhere, an alleyway or a parking lot or something," said Wilby. As though the driver had he'd heard us, he busted through a corrugated iron fence into a construction site.

I saw the exit he was heading for and took a shortcut over a pile of dirt and some foundations, destroying the car's suspension but putting us between the gates and him. He swerved into a pile of wooden pallets then tried to back up, but Wilby placed a bullet into the guy's head so cleanly that he didn't even look like he knew he'd been shot. I looked around for the SUVs, but they'd all overshot and were still on the other side of the fence.

Wilby dragged the guy out of the van and got in behind the wheel. He backed it up and I jumped into the passenger seat. We punched through the other fence onto the main road just as the IAA cars entered the construction site behind us.

"How the hell are we gonna lose 'em in this thing?" Said Wilby. The van was heavy, slow and handled like a ninety-foot yacht on a sea of jello. We passed the Dignity Village and I had one of my brilliant ideas.

"Swing around and take us back," I said. I took out my 9mm Micro-SMG and strapped on my seatbelt.

Wilby pulled on the emergency brake and jerked the wheel violently. I thought we were going to flip, but instead we made huge half-circle from one side of the highway to the other, scattering the oncoming traffic as they all tried to avoid us. The IAA cars all went in different directions, one slammed into a truck and trailer causing a pile-up on the southbound carriageway and the other three ended up off-road.

We were soon back at the entrance to the Dignity Village, a concrete tunnel under the railroad which led into a farmyard, now occupied by a group of anti-capitalist protesters. Wilby drove into the tunnel at full speed while I aimed my gun at the gas canister I'd noticed as we'd driven past the first time. I hit it and a stream of flame immediately shot out the side. There was a second canister at the other end of the tunnel and I put a bullet into that one too.

As we drove over the small wooden bridge towards the barn I looked back and saw the first IAA car entering the tunnel, with the second and third close behind it. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. The first gas canister exploded and set off the fuel tank of the first SUV. It span sideways in the narrow tunnel. The cars following couldn't do anything to avoid it. They T-boned the burning wreck, pushing it onto the second gas bottle just as that went up. The tunnel became a furnace of twisted metal and flames, nothing was going to be following us.

We carried on along the side of the barn, through the trees and up the embankment onto the railroad. We followed the tracks through the Braddock Pass all the way south to the back road which led to the Humane Labs, watching the cops and firetrucks racing along the highway below us. Then we stopped to check the truck and cover up the bullet holes and broken glass. It was dented and scratched but no more than the average Go Postal van. I made a quick call to Jane to see how things were going with them, but there was no signal. They'd be on the opposite side of Mount Chilled to us, I told myself, or else they'd be tied up and undergoing some horrific ritual.

It was a short drive down the access road to the Lab and we tried to look as much like feckless postal workers as we could. We pulled up at the gate and the security guard barely even looked up from his iFruit phone. He kicked the button that raised the barrier with the heel of his shoe that had been resting on the security desk. We drove in. Lester had told me to go to Building 8, to the Genetics department, and meet a guy in a white lab coat smoking a cigarette. That could be almost anybody, I thought, but sure enough there was a guy standing outside on his own down at the end of the plaza. I took out the package with the money, or whatever Lester had stuffed in there (who knew with Lester, it might even be photos of the guy doing something saucy with one of his lab monkeys), and handed it to the guy just like any normal delivery package. He told me to pull the van around to the loading bay and ask for 'the parcel for Mr. Briggs'. I said nothing more and walked down through the staff car park, texting Wilby to meet me there.

The parcel was about the size of microwave oven and weighed about the same. It felt like there was a lot of packaging around it. We found out later that it was a small chiller unit with the samples of fruit flies kept in hibernation, plus a canister of specially formulated insecticide which would kill them.

We put the parcel in the back and drove out, up onto the main highway, and that was when we saw another IAA car. It followed us along the highway, through Grapeseed and along the dirt road that followed the northern shoreline of the Alamo Sea.

"What do you think," said Wilby, "are we gonna take 'em, lose 'em or what?" Just then my earpiece crackled and Jane's voice broke through the static.

"We're at the end of the tunnel. We got Sento but there's a big ugly mob looking for us, so hurry the hell up!"

"Stay in the tunnel, we're nearly there" I said.

Wilby put on some speed, but it was tricky on the twisting loose-dirt road. I'd seen plenty of getaways go wrong along here with over zealous and inexperienced drivers in fast cars simply sliding off the road and down into the lake.

"Quick, switch places," I said to Wilby. He looked at me in disbelief, but knew me well enough to know I wasn't joking around. When I got into the driver's seat I really started to pick up the pace, swinging the van around the corners like a Finnish rally driver.

The IAA SUV behind was keeping up, but just by the fork in the road, where it branched off up to the Mount Chilliad tunnel, I slammed on the brakes and turned as late as I dared. The SUV missed the turning and swerved to avoid an oncoming motorhome, then skidded off the road and down the embankment. I didn't look back to see the rest, and raced up the hill and over the bridge that led into the tunnel, hoping we could switch vehicles before the IAA caught up with us.

Jane's Rancher was parked right in the middle of the tunnel with the engine running. We ditched the van and grabbed the insects from the back. Sento was on the rear seat of the Rancher and Wilby and me got in either side of him.

"So what happened at the cultist's camp?" I asked Jane.

"I don't want to talk about it. I NEVER want to talk about it!" Was all she would say. I looked over at Stone and he fixed me with a thousand-yard stare.

"We saw things." He said. "Things nobody should ever see."

It was only when we pulled away that we noticed that the daylight at each end of the end of the tunnel was gone. Then the lights lining the roof of the tunnel went dark, and finally the engine of the Rancher cut out and all the electrics died, including the headlights. Even our phones and comms went off. Seconds later a set of headlights came on behind us and a car drove up and stopped about ten feet away. A woman got out, silhouetted in the lights. She stood there, like she was waiting for something. There was a tense pause while I waited for a gunshot, or something, but there was nothing, she simply stood there.

"I'll go and speak to her," I said, finally breaking the silence.

I walked towards her. Two bodyguards, totally unseen in the darkness, came from either side and frisked me. I heard my gun clatter off to my left and the knife I kept sheathed at my back was pulled out and thrown away. The woman got back into the car and the bodyguards pushed me into the seat next to her.

"How's retirement," she said. "That is what you were supposed to do after the Pac Standard job. It was too dark to see her face, but I recognised the voice instantly. The same woman who had given us the codes to the Humane Labs and had met us at the lake after the Humane Heist. "Seems that someone's been robbing our Postal Vans." She said. "Nobody's supposed to rob our postal vans except us."

One of the guys outside passed her a smart phone through the open door and she read its screen.

"What have you been doing I wonder? A visit to the Humane Labs, an old hippy, a stolen submarine? Oh, but not just any old hippy. Austin Sento! The 'Game King'. Now why would you need a slot machine expert, genetically engineered fruit flies and a submarine?" I realised I hadn't even taken a breath since I'd got into the car. I had to stay silent, I couldn't afford to give her any clues, but it was obvious she'd worked it all out already. "The Casino? Yes, that's it, it has to be. You're going to rob the FIB's Laundromat!" She clapped her hands together and laughed. It wasn't a nice sound. "Oh that's wonderful! You know, if it were anyone else, I'd turn you in right away, have you renditioned to somewhere, but you might actually be able to pull this off. Is there anything you need from us? Guns, vehicles, equipment? Really, just ask." Without waiting for a reply, she signalled her bodyguards, who then bundled me out and pushed me back in the direction of our truck. I stumbled back to my crew and tried to think of how I was going to tell them about this new development.

I got into the Rancher and everything came back to life. The lights in the tunnel, the Rancher's engine, even the light at the end of the tunnel had returned, but the car, the bodyguards and the IAA's super-bitch were all gone.

"So, what did they want?" Asked Wilby.

"They know," I said. "They know everything. We have to call it off."


	5. V - Game King

GAME KING

We decided, as a group, not to tell Lester about any of the IAA stuff. If he didn't like the idea of the a second government agency getting involved on our end, he could call the thing off entirely. We had no way of continuing the heist without him and he might even be inclined to frame us up for that Zancudo job and the plane crash at the reservoir. Lester sometimes seemed like funny little geek with no social skills and no friends, but I'd witnessed the effect he could have on the lives of people who had crossed him. In his own way he'd probably been responsible for more deaths than me or my whole crew.

Sento didn't know anything about Lester and he had no idea why we'd sprung him out of the Altruists camp. We tried to get as much information out of him as possible on the drive back to the City. As well as being a hacking legend, Austin Sento had once been a virtuoso violinist. At one time he had been at the top of his profession, but his weakness had been gambling. He'd lost several fortunes playing poker, blackjack and betting on horse racing, but then he'd discovered slot machines. As he sank deeper into debt his health suffered, his performing skills deteriorated and his career nose-dived. By the time he'd lost his house and his wife, he'd hit upon a fool proof way to beat one of the most popular gaming machines, the Lady Luck just like the one me and Lester had seen in the Casino that night.

When we reached my apartment Paige had set up a Lady Luck machine in my lounge. It had been redirected via the Casino's own maintenance department, courtesy of Paige's own hacking skills. The Lady Luck was an old design, every bit as much of a classic to gamblers as a Declasse Tornado or Voodoo was to me. It had been upgraded over the years with new electronics and software patches and other kinds of cosmetic improvements, but at it's heart was still the same basic code that it had run on since the mid-eighties, and that was where it's flaw lay Sento explained.

Within minutes of walking into my apartment, Sento had begun playing on the machine. His hands moved up and down the keys while his eyes remained steady on the video display reels. The faces on the virtual playing cards flicked by with an artificial sound effect. Slowly after about forty minutes Sento had a full house lined up thousands of dollars banked up just waiting for him to hit the 'Payout' button.

"How old is this machine, is it up to date?" He jabbered.

"It's what they use in the Casino up at the racetrack," I said.

I watched him play it some more and noticed he still wasn't taking the payout from the hands he'd won. His 'Bank' was building up to over twelve-thousand.

"This is the glitch," he said. "Integer overflow! Keep all your winnings, then wait until the payout hits $16,384!" He showed me the magic number rolling up in the corner of the screen as he made another full house, then everything went blank.

"What happened? Has it stopped working?" I started to look for the socket where the machine was plugged in to do a hard reset. Sento stopped me. The machine glitched back into life.

"It resets the memory, but look." He pressed all of the hold buttons in turn, then off again, then he hit 'Spin'. Instead of losing the use of the hold buttons on the second spin they'd become a permanent function. He could make any hand he wanted at will.

"All we need is for you get seven kings, can you do that?" I asked him.

"Sure, I can get anything I want with this set up now. What do we get for seven kings?" He asked. I picked up the phone and dialled one of Lester's many phone numbers.

"You get a brand new Sandking truck," I said, 'and we get over two million dollars,' I muttered to myself.

"But I can't drive," said Sento.

Someone on the other end of the phone picked up and I said,

"The new machine's been installed and my operator's warming it up right now."

"Good. Get your man cleaned up and buy him some clothes, but don't get rid of the beard or hair. Take him out on Friday, then get yourself down to the beauty parlour. I left you all the details." With that he hung up. I knew about the 'take him out part' and for once it wasn't an instruction to have someone assassinated. Lester wanted Sento to be in the Casino on Friday night and he wanted me to be in the Los Santos Customs next to Lester's Garment Factory.

Sitting on the desk in my Heist Planning Room was an envelope with a bunch of photographs of Sandking trucks and some scribbled notes about where my crew all needed to be for the next setup job. Now we had the sub, a Bugstars van and equipment, the insects, and Lester had worked out the finer details of how we would rob the FIB's money laundering Casino, the getaway vehicle was the last piece of the puzzle.

I introduced Sento to 21st century personal hygiene technology then took him down to Ponsonby's for a new suit. I chose him something flashy that made him look like an eccentric tech millionaire. I guessed that the hair and beard would be so he didn't get recognised too easily by the Casino's security systems, since Sento had been barred from about every major gambling establishment in the country. While I was doing that Jane and Wilby went out to Blaine County and got hold of a Sandking XL. They drove it down to La Mesa to the LS Customs where it got stripped down and fitted with a long list of modifications.

The Sandking was going to get us and the money boxes out of the Casino and out to the ocean, where the mini-sub would be waiting. For the last week I'd been flying around East of Los Santos working out my route. Jane and Paige had also been busy modifying the sub to carry the metal boxes and doing test dives along the coast. They'd found somewhere deep enough to get the sub in without it being seen, yet close enough to a high cliff so we could drive the truck off of it. Hopefully we lose the cops and maybe fool them into thinking we'd driven in by accident and drowned. Either way, they wouldn't be able to follow us once we were safely in the mini-sub.

So after I'd given Sento his brand new fake ID dropped him off at the Casino I drove down to the customisation shop to where our Sandking was sitting with nine of the best mechanics we could find. They'd upgraded the truck's engine, added a nitro boost, a bigger turbo, better brakes and fitted stronger suspension to take the extra weight of the cash boxes and armour plating. They'd also built in a false compartment under the rear seats to store SCUBA gear, and they'd even hidden Micro SMGs inside the wheel arches so we could get to them inside the Casino if we needed to. Despite all of this, from the outside the truck looked totally standard. The only thing we didn't know was the colour of the truck we'd be switching it with, that was going to be the tricky part.

I sent Jane and Stone off in a Pounder delivery truck to go to the Vapid dealership in Pillbox Hill. I called Wilby at the East Docks and told him Sento was building up to hit the jackpot. Wilby reported that he was at the top of one of the cranes and he was looking out over all the brand new Sandking trucks which had just been unloaded off the container ship from China (even Vapid had stopped making things in the USA). Somewhere among the dozens of new trucks would be the one destined for the Casino.

Paige was on her usual evening shift in the Casino and was giving us regular updates. Staff weren't allowed to carry phones or other electronic devices on the Casino floor, so we were relying on her half-hourly smoke breaks. The last we'd heard Sento was still building up his payout pot towards the magic number that would trigger the glitch. This waiting was always the worst part of any mission.

It was difficult co-ordinating everyone, not being there myself, hoping it all came together somehow. I kept telling myself that I had a good crew, I could trust them to handle anything, but that meeting in the tunnel was still bothering me. I didn't trust the IAA and I doubted they'd let us off the hook so easily. Maybe they'd let us steal the money then they'd rob us? Maybe they'd use the whole thing to blackmail us into doing more of their dirty work. It all made me uneasy, and it was a distraction that I really didn't need right now.

I was snapped back into the present by an unscheduled call from Paige.

"Sento's having problems, the glitch isn't working!" She said.

"Not working? Is it the machine? I thought they were the same as the one you had shipped to my apartment?" I said.

"I don't know, he says there's something different about them. Maybe they've been patched." She rang off abruptly. If Sento couldn't win the Sandking we couldn't get our replacement in there and our getaway was busted. We could steal the stock Sandking from the Casino but we'd never survive all those cops in an unmodified truck. Crucially, the jump from the cliff and into the deep water was just too far without the uprated engine and nitro. I called the others to tell them to sit tight and get ready for a long wait, but I knew this would only make them more nervous.

The longest hour of my life passed and then another call came in from Paige.

"We figured it out, the machines were set for a five dollar limit. All I had to do was set them to the maximum ten-dollar limit. I don't think anyone noticed. Sento managed to get the glitch working and he's on his fourth king now."

"Do you think anyone knows he's cheating?" I asked.

"Technically he isn't, he hasn't taken a single payout yet so none of the alerts will be triggered in the control room."

Sento had told me one evening how he was never actually convicted of fraud. In court his defence lawyer had maintained that all his client had done was operate the machine using its normal interface, he had not modified or caused the machine to malfunction in any way. His case was eventually thrown out, but the Casino had already confiscated his winnings. Unfortunately the tax on those winnings was still due, and without the money to pay it he'd gone to prison.

Almost another hour went by before Sento made his sixth king. Then another half an hour later Paige texted me a single number '7'. He'd done it! Sento was now the proud owner of a $45,000 Sandking, whether he wanted it or not. He'd been led off to fill out the paperwork, and sure enough the Casino had put in the call to the Vapid dealership for a replacement. Jane called in that the flatbed truck had left the dealership and they were now following it to the docks. Finally, it was on!

I told everyone in the workshop to get ready. They already had our Sandking masked up on a rig inside the spray booth. The computer controlled paint mixer was filled with the special quick drying paints. Jane told us when the flatbed had arrived at the docks then Wilby took over the channel to say he could see it. Meanwhile Jane drove the Pounder into position ready for the switch. I patched Wilby's voice over the sound system in the workshop and all the mechanics listened intently for one single word, a colour, so the spray booth could run its program.

"The flatbed's driving around to the row of Sandkings. He's stopped. He's getting out." Wilby said. "He's checking all the licence plates, looking for the right one."

There was static filled silence, then Wilby's voice broke through again,

"He's got to the end of the row, right on the corner of the docks. Wait, the last truck, he's looking all around it. I think it's our truck!"

"You sure?" I said.

"Haha," laughed Wilby, "the guys complaining to himself about how he's going to have to move about four or five trucks to get it out, this is good, it should buy us some time."

"Dammit, tell us what colour it is!" I yelled at him down the line.

"Oh, it's blue. With chrome detailing. Hold on, I'm sending you the photo now."

The guy on the spray booth computer had already got the Vapid Sandking XL colour chart open and punched the correct ratios into the paint matching system. The machine sprang into life. Then Wilby's photo came through and we saw the blue Sandking with its chrome trim and a bed-cap.

"Remember, you got twelve minutes until it's dry after it leaves the booth," said the spray guy. I got my stopwatch ready. Everyone crowded around the laptop screen looking at the photo then ran around collecting parts. Four guys pulled down a matching blue bed-cap from the storage rack. Another couple got the chrome vinyl ready for the detailing. The licence plate guy pulled down a blank and put it into his press. Someone shouted,

"Hey what wheels?" and I radioed Wilby.

"Get us close-up of the wheels!"

"Ok, I can't see yet, he's still only moving the first truck, he's having to back it up past all the others."

Eventually the second picture came through and the wheel guys had an argument about which ones they were. They didn't have the right ones so one of them called their branch in Burton to send a set right away. The spray booth beeped and I started my stopwatch, but the paint guy said,

"Not yet, that's just the first coat, there's another layer."

"Wilby, just double check everything, tell us every detail on the truck you can see." He read out a list of stuff and everyone checked they had the right items. The bedcap was hooked up to a cradle in the ceiling ready to be lowered down onto our truck. The spray booth beeped for the second time.

"Ok, now we heat treat it for two minutes!" said the spray guy. I asked Wilby how much longer he thought we had.

"Ok, he's got two more Sandkings to move, then he's going to be taking ours out of the row. How's it going over there?"

"Just great," I said. "Be ready to steal the truck, but not until I say."

Another two minutes followed as I waited for the door on the spray booth to open. I set my stopwatch for twelve minutes and hit the start button.

"He's getting into our truck now," said Wilby. "He's backing out, very carefully." Everyone helped to wheel the rig with the now perfectly blue Sandking on it out of the booth and into the fitting bay. Even before it had stopped moving some of them started tearing off the masking sheets. Four guys ran around behind them applying the chrome vinyl to the wheel arches and sills. The truck was already starting to look like the one in the photo.

"Wait, there's a bull-bar on the front." Said Wilby. "He's backed it around the corner and it's got a chrome bull-bar on the front." Everyone was already busy so I ran up to the racking at the back of the workshop, but I couldn't see what I was looking for. One of the mechanics shouted at me, telling me which shelf it was on. I pulled a bull-bar down and hauled it around to the front of the truck ready to be fitted.

The van with the wheels skidded to a halt outside and more guys appeared to put them on like a pit crew. At the same time the bed-cap was lowered down onto the back and the last piece of chrome vinyl was stuck on. I climbed up into the cab and got ready to start the engine.

"Ok, he's parked our truck up behind the flatbed, ready to load it. I'm going down."

"We're not ready yet, can you stall him?" I saw six guys at the front trying to put on the bull-bar, but it didn't fit. I'd grabbed the wrong one from the shelf.

"I'm on it," said another voice in my ear. It was Stone and he'd walked down from where Jane was waiting with the Pounder to where all the Sandkings were parked. I overheard him speaking to the delivery driver, "Hey buddy, shift them trucks will ya. Put 'em back into the row before one of my guys runs into 'em." The driver mumbled and groaned, but didn't argue. I pictured all the trucks the guy had moved to get ours out of the row parked haphazardly around the port access road. It would probably take the guy a while to put them all back.

Suddenly I felt the truck drop down to the ground. The right bull-bar was on, everything looked perfect and the lead mechanic waved a circle in the air telling me to start her up. The mighty V8 roared into life and I checked my watch. There were still five more minutes until the paint was fully dry, but I could drive it so long as I didn't go too fast.

"Wilby, as he's moving the last truck you take the Sandking. I'm on my way," I said.

"Shouldn't be too hard, this idiot's left the motor running," Wilby replied.

I drove carefully out of LS Customs and onto the up ramp. When I got onto the main road I heard Wilby in my earpiece.

"Ok, I'm in. Hurry up!"

"Jane, you guys ready?" I heard an affirmative from her and put on some speed down the hill to the Port. I could hear the police sirens as I got closer, but I knew I had to stay out of sight of the cops. Right now they were chasing Wilby all over the docks, he'd have to keep driving in circles until I was in position. I took the road just to the right of the overpass and looped back around into the Jetsam car park, hoping everyone would be looking the other way as I crept slowly along the container lanes.

I counted off the rows, looking at the letters painted on the ground, until I was at 'F'. I saw the big Pounder delivery truck sitting with its rear doors open and a set of ramps leading into the back. Jane and Stone were standing beside them. I pulled into a the gap just behind it, hidden in between the containers. I signalled Wilby that I was in position and he started making his way over to us. Not only had both trucks been made to look alike, but me and Wilby were both wearing the same outfit. We looked identical, same clothes, same truck. Wilby swung the huge Sandking around the tight corner and up the ramp into the back of the truck, then Stone pulled the ramps away and Jane slammed the doors closed as I drove out of the gap, taking Wilby's place as the truck thief.

The cops screeched around the corner and saw me making a hard left into the next lane. I checked my stopwatch and saw that there were still two minutes remaining. I had to avoid slamming into anything and damaging the truck, but this wasn't so easy. With all the mods she was a real beast. She had so much power it was easy to get into a slide if I gave it too much gas. I rounded the corner at the top of the container lanes and almost collided with a police cruiser. Instead of hitting it though, the truck's massive wheels simply rode up over the car's hood and crushed the windshield as I carried on over the top of it.

The cops had set up a road block on the exit road, but instead of bashing through it like I normally would, I acted scared and doubled back to the east side of the docks again where the flatbed was parked. I pulled an impressive four-wheel slide around the warehouse on the corner with the ocean on my right. The flatbed driver had moved his truck across the road and was standing there with a pistol aimed at my head. This hadn't been part of the plan.

I threw on the handbrake and slid the Sandking around to the left while I bailed out of the driver's door. I heard gunshots, but none of them hit the truck, or me. I tucked and rolled into some crates and scrabbled for the edge of the dock, diving into the ocean with more bullets flying above me. I let myself sink down, diving deeper until I saw the bottom. My lungs were already bursting but I swam out, away from the docks, before coming back up to the surface. The sound of the sirens off in the distance filled my ears as I shook the water out of them. I looked up to see the cops scanning the area around the edge of the dock and a saw a Police boat moving in.

I dove back down and swam out at a more leisurely pace, towards the beach near El Burro Heights. By the time I crawled ashore under the bridge Jane had driven around in the Pounder to meet me.

"It worked," she smiled. "The guy just took our Sandking and loaded it up. Stone's following him, he's on his way to the Casino." We walked up the steps to the Elysian Fields Freeway and saw Wilby reversing the original Sandking out of the back of the truck.

"What are we going to do with this?" He asked.

"I don't know, we'll store it in my garage, maybe we can use it for a practice run," I said. We all got into the Sandking and abandoned the Pounder on the waste ground at the side of the road.


	6. VI - The Heist

THE HEIST

We all stood in my planning room, staring at the complicated diagram of times, maps and codewords written on the big board, each of us in turn repeating out loud what we had to do at each stage of the plan. Then Lester wiped everything off and told us to start again.

"We're going to go over and over this until everyone gets it right, with no mistakes!" Said Lester. He was more aggressive than usual. For all of the setup missions me and my crew had been on to secure our getaway, into the Sandking and then to the mini-sub, the really complex part of the plan was inside the Casino. This had been carefully worked out by Paige and Lester, based on all the intel about security and procedures that they'd been able to gather over the last couple of weeks. The plan seemed fairly water-tight (no pun intended), but they wouldn't be the ones who actually had to do it.

"Again!" Said Lester, and we repeated our individual roles from memory.

We'd all been given code names. A lot of the mistakes were from people forgetting to use them and this in particular was getting Lester madder than anything else. He'd explained that all the comms would be scrambled and our voices would be disguised to prevent the FIB tracing any of us after the heist, but one slip, mentioning someone's name, would be enough to bring us all down. Lester was 'The Dealer', Paige was 'Ace'. I was 'Jack', Jane was 'Seven', Wilby 'Nine' and Stone was 'Deuce'. The codename 'King' was reserved for the getaway vehicle itself. Lester would be sitting somewhere a long way from the action, co-ordinating everyone remotely. Paige would be on the roof of the Casino, tapping into the computer network. Stone was her bodyguard and had to get her out of there before we triggered the alarm. Jane would be in the sub stationed off the Palomino coast. Only Me and Wilby would be inside the Casino, disguised as Bugstar pest control guys, with scuba suits under our coveralls.

When it got to 9pm, and about the fortieth run through, an alarm went off on Lester's watch.

"Time to move, everyone make one final check and then move to first positions." Everyone stopped talking and went through their inventory of equipment, weapons and radio gear. Then we all looked over each other's outfits looking for the tiniest thing that was be out of place or missing. Then we all got into the elevator and went down to the garage. Me and Wilby got into the Bugstars Van. Jane hopped onto her Bagger motorcycle. Stone, Paige and Lester all got into an anonymous looking dark blue Stanier. The doors opened and each of us drove out and went off in separate directions.

I took the van to the Vinewood Racetrack next to the Casino and dropped Wilby off by the main gate, then drove over to the other side of the freeway to the CNT building. While Wilby climbed up onto the stadium roof, I negotiated my way past CNT's receptionist, telling her that I was here to check the bait traps. She made me sign in, but didn't ask for any ID. She printed off a visitor's pass for me, which pretty much allowed me a free run of the building, including the roof. When I got up there I opened up my tool case and slotted together my heavy sniper rifle. It was three minutes to ten, the time when everything would begin, and it was just beginning to get dark.

I looked down the scope to see Stone and Paige arriving in the main car park of the Casino, having dropped Lester off at his control room. I followed them with the scope and tracked left to find the Casino and the Grandstand without taking my eye away from the sight. Wilby was in position, on the roof of the racetrack grandstand just to the north. There were two suited Merryweather guards on the roof of the Casino that I could see. It was vital that we took them down as quickly and quietly as possible, both together if possible.

"Nine Ready," Wilby signalled. I saw Stone pulling himself up onto the roof from the south end. He and Paige had climbed up the wall next to the Casino's multi-story car park, where the trees blocked the sightline from the security cameras. Stone looked around then dashed behind a generator into cover.

"Deuce, watch it, there's two guards at the north end," I said.

"I see 'em," said Wilby.

"Wait for the clock, one more minute," I said, watching the time tick towards 10pm.

I counted off the last five seconds looking through the scope of the rifle, lining up my target at the base of his neck.

"3, 2, 1…" then I pulled the trigger. My guard dropped a split second after Wilby's. Stone broke cover and dragged the bodies out of the way, behind an electrical box.

"Ace, you're clear," said Stone. Paige took her cue to climb onto the roof and make her way to the main air conditioning unit. She opened the glass vial with the insects inside and dropped it into the unit then pulled out the power cable.

It didn't take long for the Casino's own maintenance guys to arrive, via a door in the side of one of the utility cabins. They walked over to the AC unit and started trying to fix it. Now it was Stone's turn to take out some guys, but neither of them were armed, except with wrenches and a flashlight. Me and Wilby covered him in case something went wrong, but Stone caught them both by surprise. They hit the floor in seconds and Stone dragged the bodies over where he'd hidden the Merryweather guys. He grabbed their radio.

"This is maintenance," said Stone into the radio in a thick Liberty City accent, "main unit's down. She needs a new pump. Gonna take about an hour." There was chatter on the other end which Stone's mic couldn't quite pick up, but Stone gave us the thumbs up. It was time for the next phase.

Wilby started climbing down from the grandstand while I packed my sniper rifle away and went back down to the van. As the temperature in the Casino's vent system rose the insects inside would come out of hibernation. Pretty soon there'd be an infestation of them and since the Casino didn't have its own pest control guys, they'd put in a call to Bugstars, a call that Paige would intercept and put through to Lester. By the time I'd driven around to meet Wilby at the entrance to the racetrack, we got the signal from Lester that the call had been put in.

"I told them I'd have someone there in five minutes," Lester informed us. "Get to the service entrance at precisely 22:15." We already knew we had to do that, but Lester was worrying as usual. We got to the Casino's vehicle entrance right on the dot and pressed the intercom. Someone in security opened the metal gate and we drove up the spiral ramp which led into the Casino's own multi-storey car park. The first level was a Service Area where all the maintenance and delivery vehicles came in and out, including the armoured trucks that delivered the money. There was a normal rent-a-cop security guard, not a Merryweather, waiting there for us. I rolled down the window and pulled up next to him.

"You the bug killer guys?" He asked. I poked my head out of the driver's window, looked at the large 'Bugstars' logo printed on the side of the van, then looked back at the guard. "You got here quick," he said.

"We were right around the corner," I said. "What's the problem?" He shrugged, but pointed to the service elevator. I parked the van in the space next to it and got out as one of the Casino managers appeared from somewhere.

"We've lost our air conditioning unit and now the place is filling up with flies," said the manager. "Nothing we spray them with seems to work. The customers are starting to complain, some of them are leaving. We could lose a small fortune if this isn't fixed." I smirked at Wilby and he grinned back.

I pulled open the back doors and we both dragged out the huge vacuum cleaner on wheels that was our shopping cart in disguise. Of course nothing was killing the bugs, they'd been genetically engineered at Humane Labs to be resistant to all forms of insecticide, except one. The package we'd picked up from the Labs had contained the only thing that would kill them, a genetically coded toxin which we'd diluted and filled two backpack style spray packs with. We'd also mixed in some chloroform which could take out anybody we sprayed it at, but it would only work at close range.

I put on my spray pack and then helped Wilby on with his.

"Where's your AC unit?" I asked. "We should check there first." He led us into the staff elevator and took us to the fourth floor. There were flies all over the walls, the ceiling and buzzing around in the corridor. This was the topmost floor where the Security Control room was, as well as all the manager's offices. The manager showed us the ladder which led up to the roof and I climbed up while he waited at the bottom with Wilby. I walked out onto the roof from the same door I'd seen the maintenance guys emerge from earlier and saw Stone and Paige.

"How's it going?" I said.

"Nobody else has come up," said Stone. Paige was busy on her laptop, which she'd hardline connected with the Casino's security system. Paige was vital to the operation and had to get us into the Counting room and the Vault. I waited a couple of minutes, slammed my fist onto the panels around the AC for dramatic effect, then climbed down the ladder.

"Yeah, they're in there all right, but I think the nest must be somewhere else, probably inside the building." The manager let out a frustrated sigh, swatting at a fly as it buzzed in front of his face.

"Just tell me you get rid of them. If we have to close, it'll be my job on the line!" I patted him on the shoulder and assured him it would be fine.

"My partner here will go down to the ground floor and I'll start clearing out this level," I said, putting on a breather mask. "You should clear the area, this stuff ain't good for you to breathe," I pointed at my spray pack.

"Ok, but we need to assign you each a security guard. They'll be able to let you through the doors," the manager explained.

He made a call and a couple of big Merryweather guys came out of the Security room just down the corridor. I got a glimpse inside and could see two camera operators and maybe one more guard. Wilby asked the guy with him to lead the way and they went back to the elevator. I dragged the vacuum cleaner with me over to the ladder which led up to the roof and parked it. Then I made straight for the Security room with the guard right behind me.

"Stay back!" I told him. "Need to check every room," I said to the guard. He put his card into the reader by the door and opened it. I pumped the lever on my spray pack to pressurise it and as the door opened I hit the guard and everyone in the room with the spray. It knocked them all out in a couple of seconds. They dropped to the floor, choking and gagging, then they stopped moving.

"Main Security room cleared," I said into my mic. This was the signal for everyone else to start the next stage of the plan.

"On First Floor, proceeding to Basement," replied Wilby.

I connected a neat little box of tricks that Lester had made to the audio feed on in the security room. This would now allow Lester to take and respond to calls from the floor staff or other security guards when they checked in. Then I put one of Lester's special 'deadlock' cards into the reader on the inside of the security room. I pulled all the bodies inside, walked out and closed the door behind me. The deadlock would freeze the locking system as long as it was in the reader, preventing any other cards from opening it from the outside, and the override to the door lock system was in the Security Room.

I checked the ceilings and walls around the top floor for the tracking sensors Paige had told us about. There were twenty-four of them and they monitored the movement of the cash boxes throughout the building. I spotted one in the corner with two dozen or so flies resting on it. I pulled out a spray can containing the special magnetic polymer Paige had made up and squirted it onto the sensor. The flies ignored it, but the red light inside the dome of the sensor began flashing. Paige had told us that if we sprayed over half the sensors, the system would stop working. If we didn't disable this system then when we moved the boxes from the Vault and through the Casino we'd trigger the Lockdown.

I made sure the rest of this floor was clear, going through all the offices, finding more tracking sensors and spraying them as I went, then I grabbed the vacuum cleaner and made for the elevator. I went down to the First Floor where the staff elevator opened into the stairwell. To get to the Basement I needed to cross the main Casino floor to the service elevator. I pressed the button on the wall to let myself out and walked into the noise and heat of the Casino.

It was really warming up on the main floor and there were swarms of flies, though they were mainly flying around in the hotter air up in the ceiling. People seemed oblivious to the heat and the flies and were gambling away their money like nothing was wrong. I pushed through the crowds and looked over at the Sandking, our Sandking, sitting up on its ramps above the slot machines. Then I froze in my tracks. Sitting there in front of the slots was Sento! He was punching the buttons on three machines at a time.

"Dealer, we have a big problem," I whispered. "Sento's here and he's trying to win our Sandking!"

"I don't suppose any of you told him what his part in the plan actually was?" Said Lester.

"He didn't think we busted him out just to win a truck did he?"

"Couldn't we get him thrown out?" Said Wilby over the radio.

I moved in a little closer to see how close he was to winning. He'd got two machines already close to the 16,000 limit, but the one in front of him was already glitched. I also noticed a couple of security guys standing nearby, at a discreet distance.

"Wait, I just intercepted a call from one of the floor managers," said Lester. "He wants me to record the weirdo playing the Lady Luck machines."

"We don't have time for this," I said, "everyone proceed with the plan."

I got to the staff door on the other side of the floor, dragging the giant vacuum cleaner with me, then realised the door was locked.

"Ace, I need a door opened." I said.

"I'm busy, ask somebody else," shouted Paige. I waved at one of the attendants. I didn't have much trouble convincing them who I was or what I was doing here. They unlocked the door for me and I went into the storage room at the back of the main Casino floor and found the service elevator.

I got inside and pressed the 'B' button. The elevator only served the Basement, First Floor and Service Level where our van was parked, but it was huge. I realised that this was how they'd brought the Sandking in, from the service level then out through a false wall which could be opened up when the Casino was closed.

I walked into the Basement corridor and looked around for Wilby. I saw him down the end of the corridor and walked towards him, still wheeling the vacuum cleaner behind me.

"I just found the Guard Room," he whispered as I got closer. There was a sort of locker room/canteen area for off duty Merryweather guards. We both walked in together and saw there were four guys inside. Together we took them down quickly and quietly, but I was starting to worry that the more bodies we left lying around the greater the risk of someone discovering them. I spotted more sensors up in the ceiling and sprayed them with the polymer.

"How many of these things have you sprayed?" I asked Wilby.

"About eight," he said. I'd done at least six, which meant we'd covered more than half the internal tracking system.

I did the same thing to the Guard Room keycard reader as I had in the Security Control room and deadlocked it from the inside. We moved on to the Counting Room and stood at the main door. I looked the security system over; a retina scanner, a fingerprint reader and a keypad, just as Paige had described it.

"Jack, Nine in the hole," I said, which was the signal to Paige.

"On it," said Paige. "Ok, you're in. GO!" She'd managed to get into the security database and add my biometrics to the list of people allowed entry. I put my eye over the scanner and my thumb on the reader. Then I tapped in the five digit passcode we'd agreed on - five zeroes. The door to the Counting Room sprang open.

Inside there was a large table and three people. Two women counting up cash which had come in from the main floor and one man watching them do it. There were cameras on all of them, but now nobody was behind them. I hesitated briefly before spraying them, thinking that I might just scare them a little instead. These were just regular folk, they weren't Merryweather scumbags or cops, just people doing a dumb job for not much money. Wilby looked at me, waiting for me to make the first move. I think he knew what was going through my mind.

I knew it would only take one of them to raise the alarm and it was over. Everyone would get caught and it would be my fault. Too bad. I sprayed the guy as he walked towards me, his mouth open to form a question. The spray hit him in the face and he choked and collapsed on the floor. Wilby sprayed the women and they hit the floor.

Once everyone was down we moved straight to the door at the back of the room. This led to an elevator into the Sub-Basement. We were so close now.

"Ok, we've got a security system like before, retina, fingerprint, but no keypad."

"You sure?" Said Paige, who hadn't been able to access this part of the Casino. "They built this place with three part security all round. There must be another device?" I looked again.

"Here," said Wilby, pointing to the other side of the doorway. There was a coloured dial and below it two rows of six buttons, each row had a different die face on it from 1 to 6.

"There's a dial and a bunch of dice on some buttons," I said. There was a long pause.

"Are the dice different colours?" Said Paige.

"Yeah, the top row's red the bottom row's blue. The dial's all different colours too. What does it mean?" I asked.

"It means," Paige hesitated. "It means I know the guy who built this," she said absently. "Haynes?" said Paige. "Mike Haynes? He does mainly government contracts, this kind of stupid shit is his trademark. Impresses the big boys but doesn't actually do much."

"So what now?" I said.

"We could evacuate the building," said Lester, "that would bring the guards up from the Vault, and they wouldn't be able to lockdown the building."

"No, wait, I've got it," said Paige. "It's got something to do with days, number of days in a year, a different code each day. What colours does the dial have on it?" Paige asked. I looked closer.

"Black, brown, red, orange…"

"Yellow, green, blue, violet, grey, white?" Paige read the colours on the dial without even being able to see it."

"How did you know that?" I asked.

"It's the resistor code, there's ten colours right?" Now she was thinking out loud. "365 days in a year, 36 different combinations of two dice."

While we were talking Wilby went around the room and searched the pockets of the dead staff members. He turned up a couple of keycards but nothing else useful.

"What about the retina and finger print scan?" Said Wilby.

"It'll be coded to that manager guy probably," I said. He went over to the manager and dragged him towards the door.

"Lester, what day is it?" Said Paige.

"Er, Sunday? The 6th?" Said Lester.

"No, if January 1st is 1, the 2nd is 2." Lester suddenly realised what she was talking about and scrambled for a diary.

"279," said Lester.

"So number 279 in the sequence would be,"

"I got the fingerprint sorted," said Wilby, "but this guy's eyelids are swelled up from the spray."

"No, ten colours and thirty-six combinations doesn't fit 365 days," said Lester.

"But the Casino's closed five days of the year," said Paige.

"New Years, Christmas, Boxing Day?" I said.

"4th of July and Thanksgiving," said Lester.

"But it's October, so 279 minus 2?" Said Paige. "277 divided by 36 is?"

"7.69," said Lester, who had now picked up a calculator.

"Turn the dial to blue," said Paige.

"I think I have an idea how to get the retina," said Wilby, standing behind me.

"Then press the four, then the six." I turned the dial then pressed the buttons in sequence. I heard a very disturbing squishing sound to my left and concentrated very hard on the wall in front of me. The door to the elevator opened.

"We're in," I said.

"Hurry up! I think someone's outside the Security Room," said Lester.

"Deuce, go down and take a look," I said to Stone. "We'll be out of contact while we're in the vault." I dragged the vacuum cleaner into the elevator and Wilby got in next to me. I pressed the single button on the panel and we descended.

"By the way," said Paige, "I reprogrammed the gun-shot detector. It won't trigger the lockdown now."

"Gun-shot detector?" I said as the radio crackled.

"How do you reckon she know that code?" Said Wilby.

Since Paige hadn't been able to access the Counting Room or the Vault in her time working under cover in the Casino we had no idea what to expect when those elevator doors opened. All we knew from the plans Lester had obtained was that the Vault was buried thirty feet beneath the ground and had its own independent security system. We both primed our spray packs and when the doors opened we saw a brightly lit room which was completely white from floor to ceiling. There was a security door at the far end and two Merryweather guards standing either side of it.

They raised their SMGs as the doors were opening and when they saw two guys with breather masks wearing Bugstar uniforms they looked a little puzzled. We stepped out of the elevator and I made sure the vacuum cleaner was blocking the door from closing. One of the guards said,

"Who are you? Where's your security clearance?" We were almost in range to spray them, but they reacted before we could get to them.

I was lucky and dodged out of the way of my guard's firing arc as I sprayed him, but Wilby wasn't as fortunate. I turned my spray onto the other guard to make sure he was neutralised, but by then Wilby was on the ground, bleeding from his leg and shoulder. I ripped off his breather mask.

"How bad?" said Wilby, through gritted teeth.

"It's, not great," I said, knowing I should have lied.

I tried to stop the bleeding as much as I could. I packed out Wilby's shoulder wound with some rag and zipped the SCUBA suit that he was wearing under his overalls over it. Then I tore off one of the shirt sleeves from the guard's uniform and wrapped that tight around his injured leg.

"Can you stand?" I said, but he was already drifting in and out of consciousness.

If I could have gotten a signal, right at that moment I would have called an ambulance spent the next thirty years in prison to save my friend. I had to hope Wilby could carry on. I moved to the security door and hooked another of Lester's gadgets into the card reader. It ran an algorithm that analysed the system and found six weak points, then listed them in order of how easy they'd be to hack.

I selected the first option and it ran a software package that filled the screen with a load of numbers. I had a contingency plan for if someone got injured, I could switch Wilby and Stone around, I thought. The numeric sequence did its work. Paige could take Wilby out on her pre-planned escape route instead of Stone, then Stone could take over Wilby's role. Maybe Lester knew how to get him medical treatment, with no questions asked.

Suddenly the big vault door clicked open. There was a tiny room with the now familiar brown, metal cash boxes that I'd looked at in the photos, all stacked on their shelves. There were twenty-four full boxes. I threw them across the floor to the elevator. Wilby regained consciousness briefly and rolled onto his side. I ran to the elevator and bundled every box inside the empty cylinder of the vacuum cleaner. Then I clamped the lid closed and went over to Wilby. I dragged him inside the elevator and pressed the button.

The doors opened and I saw the Counting Room just as we'd left it, thankful that no alarms had gone off and the Lockdown hadn't been triggered by anything we'd done.

"EMERGENCY!" I shouted into the comm. "Nine's been hit, he's bleeding bad. He needs medical attention!"

"Get up here," said Lester, "we've got another problem." I didn't wait around to listen to what it was. I dragged the vacuum out of the Counting Room and into the service elevator, then I went back for Wilby. I took us up to the Service Level.

"Deuce, meet me on the fourth floor at the staff elevator. Ace will have to take Nine out with her."

"Forget about that, Sento's just won our getaway vehicle," said Lester.

I saw our Bugstars van still parked where we'd left it and wheeled the vacuum over to it. Then I collected Wilby and made for the staff elevator.

"It doesn't matter about Sento," I said. "We've got the goods, we're coming out!"

"But they keep asking for security to go down to get Sento, there's only so long I can stall them before someone tries to get into the security room and realises what's happening!" Said Lester urgently.

On the fourth floor I met Stone, standing over the body of another Merryweather guard. We bundled Wilby up the ladder onto the roof then I climbed up after him, with Stone behind me pulling the guard up with one hand while climbing the ladder with the other. Paige had packed up her laptop into her backpack and was ready to go, but she needed Stone to cover her exit, that had been the plan.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" She said. "You can't switch things up now!"

"He's been shot, take care of him," I told her.

"That wasn't in the plan! If he can't get out on his own, put a bullet in his head and everyone's share goes up." I thought she was joking around, but then it dawned on me, she was dead serious. Then I must have just lost it.

The next thing I remember is being on the edge of the roof with my hands gripping Paige's flimsy t-shirt and Stone trying to pull me back.

"If a member of my crew dies, you die! You fuck with a member of my crew, you fuck with me!"

"What's going on!" Screamed Lester down the comm, "get out of there now!"

"Come on man, we've got a Casino to rob," said Stone, grabbing Paige's arm to pull her back from the ledge. He led me back to the ladder.

At the bottom of the access ladder we saw two more Merryweather guards getting out of the elevator. I wondered if these were the last two guards in the building, we seemed to have taken down a lot of them. It was risky, but after what happened in the Vault I wanted to make sure we took them down clean. So far as I knew they still believed we were pest control guys.

"They can't get the door open, something about a faulty reader," one of the guards said to the other.

"Hey, have either of you guys seen the Manager?" We shook our heads and carried on towards the elevator. As we passed them, Stone turned and grabbed one from behind, snapping his neck. I went for the other one with a swift hard punch to the back of the skull.

We dragged the bodies into the elevator with us and took them down to the Service Level. It was inevitable that someone was going to notice something soon, we had to move out. When we got to the van we stuffed the bodies of the guards in the back and locked all the doors. I checked the cash boxes were still in the vacuum and dragged it into the service elevator. We took that down to the first floor and let ourselves into the main Casino.

The heat was the first thing that hit us, then the noise, then the flies. They were everywhere by now. It looked like another of the genetic traits they'd been given was the ability to breed in minutes. It was hard to believe that all of these had come from one vial. And still there were crowds of people in the Casino. The biggest group was gathered around the Lady Luck machines where Sento was, sitting right in front of our getaway vehicle. We made our way over, dragging the wheeled vacuum cleaner behind us.

Sento was stuck in the middle of the crowd with a bunch of security people and floor managers on one side and a mob of customers on the other. The argument seemed to be about Sento not being allowed to win his second truck of the week, while the customers complained that this was unfair and the Casino wasn't playing by its own rules.

It was the perfect distraction, we couldn't have come up with anything better ourselves. I waded in to the crowd and announced,

"Everybody move back, stand clear! There's a nest somewhere in here." I made a play of looking around and set my gaze on the Sandking. "They look like they're coming from over there." I looked up at the huge Sandking proudly overhanging the row of slots, like it was about to leap off a cliff.

"In the truck?" Said one of the floor staff.

"It has to be," I explained. "It was brought in here recently right?" I asked. "Imported from China I'm guessing. Probably loaded with millions of these little bugs," I continued, dragging the vacuum around to the back of the Sandking. I got Stone to help me lift it into the tailgate of the truck, then I climbed in after it.

Nobody stopped us. I pushed the vacuum up to the front of the truck and locked it down with the straps hidden in the base of the vacuum's drum. Once it was secure I got onto on of the ramps and edged along the side of the truck, pretending to look for a nest.

"Probably up here somewhere," I said, "near the engine or maybe inside the radiator." Stone followed me up the other side, to the passenger door. I ran my hand under the wheel-arch and felt for the handle of the concealed micro-SMG. Stone grabbed his gun from under the other wheel-arch and got in through the passenger door. Then I opened the driver's door and climbed in.

There were still too many people between us and the main doors, but I hit the starter bypass button under the dashboard anyway. The engine roared to life.

"Hey, you can't…" someone started to say and I fired off the gun through the window. Everyone scattered, screaming and then the lockdown alarm went off.

I planted the accelerator into the plush carpeting of the footwell and the Sandking launched from the ramps, scraping the ceiling, sending electrical sparks and plasterwork raining down. Then its big wheels hit the floor just in front of the security desk. The steel shutters were already a third of the way down the main doors, but I drove right at them, out through the lobby window.

We felt the impact on the roof as we smashed through the shutters but they tore away like they were made of cardboard. We rolled over the top of a taxi waiting on the rank outside and smashed into the side of a limo, but the armour plating was doing its job and we still hadn't taken any damage. I backed up and turned left, facing south toward our getaway route.

We had over two million dollars in untraceable cash in the back of a supercharged, bulletproof truck and every cop and FIB officer in the city had just been alerted to where we were. Now all we had to do now was make it to the ocean and the waiting mini-sub.


	7. VII - The Getaway

VII - The Getaway

The Sandking's engine roared like a pissed off rhinocerous, crashing and smashing through everything that was in its way. I pulled a sharp left under the Casino's canopy and followed the side road around the side of the building, past the service entrance and down to the tunnel. I could already hear sirens on the main road, Police and FIB, and I knew the cops would have been given orders to shoot to kill, but we wouldn't be going anywhere near the tarmac.

The tunnel brought us into the paddock area in the middle of the Racetrack. At the side of us was the white railings of the racetrack itself, in front of us was the small lake. I drove through the shallow water lining up for the grass bank on the opposite side. The Sandking had so much power and was jacked up on such strong springs that it didn't need much coaxing to get it to jumped over the railing. We hit the dirt of the racetrack just as two sets of flashing lights showed up on our left.

Two patrol cars had come in from the main car park, and I saw even more cars behind them. I pulled on the handbrake and swung the truck right into the north stables. The cop cars followed us. Bullets pinged off the rear of the Sandking as I drove along the front of the stables and out towards the hill. We didn't even slow down as we powered up the slope, most of the cop cars and SUVs got stuck at the bottom, but by now a couple of police choppers had joined in the chase, which meant we could be spotted from the air while the ground units would be sent ahead to block us.

"Want me to take them choppers down?" said Stone, who'd obviously only memorised his own part of the plan when we'd been going through the heist back at my apartment.

"They're supposed to follow us, all the way to the cliff," I explained, between trying to keep the truck upright as we leaped over the summit of the hill and bounded over the rocks on the other side, down towards the Land Act Reservoir. "Hey, see if you can find out whether Paige and Wilby made it out ok." I told Stone. The plan had been for the roof team, originally Stone and Paige, to rappel down the side of the Casino just before we'd got onto the main floor. Paige and her 'bodyguard' were supposed to escape in a car we'd left parked in the North car park, right before the alarm got raised, but with Wilby in the state he was, I didn't know if they'd been quick enough. I couldn't afford to distract myself with such thoughts, I knew that, but it was difficult.

We were in the same place now as where we'd jacked the mini-sub, but now it was dark. I could see the lake below us glistening in the moonlight, but there were huge boulders here and rough ground which could easily put us onto our roof if I wasn't careful. I backed off the accelerator and gently worked the brakes to bring us back under control. When we reached the road at the bottom I saw a line of flashing lights, this time the red domes of Blaine County Sheriff cruisers. They were coming in along the dirt road north of the dam, but I knew once we got onto the mud flats there was no way they'd catch us.

I crossed the road and carried on down into the soft wet mud that surrounded the reservoir. A couple of the cruisers turned off the road and immediately got stuck, while the others pulled up and started shooting with pistols. I ignored them and followed the waterline. The Sandking lived up to its name and splashed trough the silt and mud around the outside of the lake. At the eastern bank, there was a tricky turn that I had to get right. The water was shallow, but a few feet in the wrong direction and we'd into deeper water, and it wasn't time to sink the truck just yet. I followed the eastern bank about as far as we could, then slowed right down looking for the steep slope. I'd done my recon in a helicopter and then walked the route the next day, but in the dark it was hard to make out the exact bit of the route we needed to take. The cops were so far away by now that their shots couldn't even hit us, but the police choppers were circling and taking the odd pot-shot at us. The bodywork was armoured, but the glass in all the windows had now gone and one stray shot could do a lot of damage to me or Stone. Then the water receeded a little and I recognised the outline of the bank we were at the bottom of. Looking up I saw the almost impossibly steep bank and I turned the truck to get the front wheels in line, then I gave it everything it had.

The huge front tires dug into the rock and earth and pulled us up. As we tilted past forty-five degrees and then went closer to seventy or eighty, they began to spin and we started slipping. I was worried that if we went back too far we'd be going into the lake backwards, but I managed to throw on the brakes and stop us as we levelled out again. I looked at Stone and he was a white as West Vinewood coke. I half expected him to jump out and start making a run for it, I wouldn't have blamed him if he did. We'd been in tougher spots than this, but not by much. I tried to fight the adrenaline pumping in my veins and remembered my off-road training.I took it slower this time, feeling the grip in the front wheels through the steering as I crawled back onto the slope.

This time I managed to get the back wheels onto the slope before the front wheels span and the four wheel drive system started distributing the power to the wheels with the most grip. Me and Stone were both pushed back into our seats, it felt like the whole truck was standing on end, but we were still going up. Steadily the slope began to level out and the engine revs increased as this mighty beast fought with gravity and won. We levelled out on top of the hill and a whiff of ocean breeze hit me. I carried on over the peak of the hill and over the other dirt road. I looked out of my window and saw one of the police choppers almost level with us, following the contour of the hill. He could be no more than ten or twelve feet away, I could probably have taken him out with my micro-SMG, but instead I decided to concentrate on driving, speed would be our best defence now.

At the top of the hill I could see the Palomino Freeway below and beyond that the ocean. This descent was smoother so I poured on more power. We got a little out of control on the way down the embankment, narrowly missing a tree and a rock, but by the time we'd flattened out I had it pointing vaguely the right way again.

"Lester says Paige and Wilby got out," said Stone, and I felt a little less worried, but then I considered the possibility that Lester might just be telling me that to make me feel better, or maybe even Stone had made it up. If something had happened to Wilby, would either of them have wanted to tell me at this crucial moment?

We drove right across the interstate sending cars and trucks swerving in all directions. Then we crossed the median strip and did exactly the same thing on the other carriageway. A big Mule delivery truck came from my blindside and span us around, ripping off one of our front wings. Stone fired at the cab out of frustration, causing the driver to panic and leap out onto the highway, causing even more chaos. By now the Sandking was pretty beat up; we'd lost a rear door, a wing and the hood, but it only needed to last about another half mile.

I looked for the train tracks and drove up onto them, following them the short distance to the NOOSE building. We needed to get around the back and onto the access road for the last part of our route. A couple of cop cars piled in behind us from the freeway but they obviously didn't know the area very well and disappeared down the chasm between the railroad and the security fence around the NOOSE compound.

"Did you put on a wetsuit?" I said to Stone.

"Didn't think I'd need one," he said.

"You were supposed to put one on under your overalls, in case you got switched for me or Wilby. You know, the backup plan!" I shouted at him. There didn't seem much point arguing about it now. "Do you even know what to do when we hit the water?" I asked him.

"Yeah yeah yeah, I know!" He assured me.

We passed the security gates to the NOOSE building and I spotted the distinctive profile of our hill, silhouetted in the night sky. I aimed straight for the summit and hoped that our amazing Sandking still had enough life in it to carry us to the top. We were so close now, but the hardest part was going to be driving off the cliff and missing the rocks beneath. We hadn't actually gotten around to doing a practice run, and the extra weight of the money boxes and Stone (he was about fifty or sixty pounds heavier than Wilby) meant we'd need more power to reach top speed.

Again I slowed up on the ascent, following the ridge to the summit of the hill. I turned the truck east and stopped. I looked for the distinctive pillar of rock sticking out of the ocean. To the the right of that was a small tree, barely even visible from way up here, but to the left of that was our spot. I had to hit it perfectly and at over 100mph or we land on the rocks or in the shallow water, and probably explode. I looked around, there were no cop cars, but there were still four choppers buzzing around. The marksmen had stopped shooting, probably in the belief that we'd given up and were about to surrender.

I gunned the engine a couple of times and noted the revs were still up near the red line. The whole the truck rocked with the massive torque of the V8. I slotted the selector lever into the high-gear ratio then unscrewed the safety cap on the nitro boost. I gripped the wheel with both hands.

"Let's do it man," said Stone, bracing himself against the dashboard. At first, I simply let my foot off the brake and let her roll, barely accelerating, trying to keep the wheels from spinning and maintaining traction. Then I gradually put on some power, all the time lining us up to the right of the rock. I checked the speedometer and tired to gauge the distance then added more and more power. As the slope began to level out I buried my right foot hard into the floor an put my thumb on the nitro button.

Once I saw we were in line to the left of the edge of the cliff I hit the button. We went from 80mph to over 100mph in less than a second, and we were still accelerating! It was getting harder to control the three tons of truck as it lurched about on it's wrecked suspension, but this ceased to matter when we were off the edge and flying through the air sixty feet above the water. The beach, the rocks and then the waves all blurred beneath us. I took in a big gulp of air, took my hands off the wheel, my feet off the pedals and grabbed the hand holds.

It felt like we'd hit a concrete wall when we landed, but I knew it was water we'd hit and not rock. We sank pretty quickly thanks to having no windows left, courtesy of the LSPD. As I opened my eyes I saw that we were sinking down, we had made it to the deep part of the bay, right where we were supposed to be. Then I saw the lights of the mini-sub coming towards us and overcame my disorientation to remember what I had to do next. I turned around to see that the back seat had floated away, just as the mechanics had rigged it to, revealing our scuba gear in its hidden compartment. I quickly grabbed a tank and put the mouthpiece between my teeth, taking in the air to relieve my aching lungs. Stone managed to get his own tank a second later and I could see his mouth grinning around the mouthpiece. He gave me an enthusiastic thumbs up. I knew that despite everything he was having the time of his life. He lived for this kind of stuff.

When the Sandking finally hit the bottom and came to a rest we were both pulled off our Bugstar overalls and fitted the fins onto our feet. I carefully swam out through the smashed glass into the rear compartment and pulled the inner release on the bedcap. The whole roof floated off and Stone swam around from the side door. Jane brought the sub around to hover above us and I cut the straps holding the boxes. The tracking devices would still be working which meant we weren't safe yet. We picked up each one and stuck them onto the electro-magnetic plates that had been fitted to the sidepods of the sub. When they were all attached we swam up to the hatch in the underside of the sub and Jane opened it from the inside.

The internal air pressure prevented the water from flooding into the interior of the sub and it was always a slightly odd experience crawling up through the short tube. Jane helped us up,

"Glad you could make it," she said, though she looked a bit surprised to see Stone and not Wilby. I could tell from my sister Jane's expression that something else was wrong though.

"What's up?"

"I was followed here, by another sub. Not a mini-sub, I mean a real one. Where's Wilby?"

"He's okay, but he took a bullet. I sent him out with Paige."

Jane took the pilot's seat and I sat next to her. Stone clamped the hatch closed then opened up the flip seat in the back and sat down.

"Another sub?" I asked.

"They've been pinging me all the way from the cave."

"Could it be the IAA, or you think someone's told the Feds?" Said Stone. Neither of us answered.

We headed out of the bay and into the deeper waters. Jane very carefully dove us down. We could follow the ocean floor as it fell away sharply from the coast. We went to 400 feet and carried on. Once we passed 450 feet we heard the first of the boxes outside go 'thud'. Then another one cracked, and another. Jane levelled us off at 480 and we waited, counting off each of the imploding boxes until we got to 24.

"That's all of them," I said.

"Up?" Said Jane.

"No, stay at this level, take us north through the trench," I said.

There was long underwater canyon that followed the coast, something to do with the geologic faultline that the state of San Andreas sat on. After about ten minutes we came back up to 100 feet and turned in towards the coast again, waiting until we could see the sea floor. Jane pulled the sub to a stop up then me and Stone put our diving gear on and went back out through the hatch. Once she saw that we were clear Jane pulled a switch on the control panel which turned off electro-magnet and released the metal boxes. All of them fell away, kicking up the sand on the seabed. I swam over to them and passed each one up to Stone who then lifted them up through the bottom hatch to Jane. Once all the boxes were inside we climbed back in shut the hatch behind us.

We carried on north along the coast, as we had before.

"You reckon they can hear us?" said Stone. "In the trench I mean. It's like radar right, you know that terrain thing?"

"Nah, hydrophones, but similar principle," Jane replied. While she piloted the sub, me and Stone started pulling the bundles of soaking wet cash out of the boxes and packing them in bags. Once all the money was transferred we dumped the empty boxes out through the hatch and figured out how much we'd got.

"Over $2.4 million," I announced. "So all we have to do now is complete our vanishing act. I mean the cops must think we're dead and I'm guessing that whatever Jane's mystery submarine out there is, it probably only suspects theres something driving around out here." Over an hour had passed since we'd crashed the Sandking into the ocean and I thought it was probably safe to go up and see where we actually were.

We broke out onto the surface near El Gordo lighthouse. The eastern horizon was already starting to glow with the light of dawn. I popped open the top hatch and gasped as the fresh air filled my airways. Jane, who had been down in the mini-sub almost the whole night, pushed me out of the way and hauled herself onto the roof of the sub stood, stretching her arms and back.

"How much battery do we have left?" I asked.

"Stone, check the gauge in the middle," she said. On the control panel there were readouts for compressed air (which was now recharging from the surface atmosphere via a small compressor), carbon dioxide levels and battery charge.

"Says, about twenty percent," Stone called up.

"Maybe an hour, probably less with the three of us plus the cash on board," Jane said.

I looked for my phone, sealed in a watertight pocket inside my wetsuit and was just about to call Lester when Jane suddenly jumped back inside.

"Shit!"

"What is it?" I asked.

"The sub, it's there. It's surfaced!" I strained to look and between the rolling waves I could see, on the eastern horizon, the unmistakable outline of a Los Santos-class submarine.

If the FIB got a hold of any of us now, with their dirty money, it would probably be a life sentence for each of us. If we dumped the money overboard it would probably be even worse. Far easier to just put a bullet in all our heads than get flown out to some state sponsored torture centre as they tried to find out what we'd done with their illegal, untraceable cash.

I jumped in and closed the hatch. Jane crashed dived the mini-sub all the way to the bottom, but we were in the shallows. If they'd followed us this far, it meant they could follow us anywhere, there was nowhere we could hide.

"What if we scuttle the sub and swim out separately, split up." Said Jane. I knew at least one of us would probably get caught, but after going over all of our options, nobody could come up with a better idea. We carried on around the coast, tracking into the canyon and staying as close to the sub's crush depth as we dared. When the battery eventually died on us Jane pulled the emergency release on the compressed air tank which pushed all of the water from the ballast tanks sending us rushing up to the surface.

We opened the top hatch to see that we were level with Procopio Beach, up the coast from Paleto Bay. I gathered up the six bags of money we had and gave two each to Jane and Stone, tying the last two to my belt.

"Hide the money or risk getting caught with it, it's up to you two," I said. Me and Stone climbed out, while Jane unscrewed the bottom hatch and swam out underneath. With both hatches open at once the mini-sub flooded and rolled onto its side. We started to swim for shore, all in different directions, but then we heard the sound of an outboard motor.

There was a dinghy coming towards us from out to sea. I dived under, assuming the worst, but when I surfaced I heard Stone yelled out,

"Wilby! Hey, look, it's Wilby." My mind started racing with possibilities, about why Wilby would be out here in a boat, given the seriousness of the injuries he'd sustained in the Casino only a few hours before. The more I thought about it the less it made sense. The dinghy's engines cut out and it continued to drift towards us. The boat passed Stone and got closer to me and I could see, it was Wilby, hanging on to the wheel. He was wrapped in a big overcoat with a helmet on. He face looked pale. He wasn't moving.

As it slowed Stone started to swim up to the boat. He caught up to it and grabbed the rope on the side. I was about head towards it myself but then I noticed a tiny red blinking light, just below the waterline of the dinghy's hull.

"No, it's a trap!" I yelled. The dinghy erupted in a ball of white-orange flame as the bomb went off. I dove beneath the water, but still felt the shockwave. I was briefly stunned, but just managed to hold on to consciousness and struggle back to the surface again. I swam to shore and crawled up onto the beach to see Jane running down to meet me. Looking back out to sea there wasn't a trace of the dinghy now, nor the mini-sub, or Stone, or Wilby or anything else.

The sun was rising. I rubbed the salt from my eyes, and noticed my hands. Green, dark green. I sat there, puzzled, trying to think why that particular colour looked so familiar. When she got to me, I checked Jane's hands and they were fine, but all over mine was a green dye, some kind of ink. There were no dye packs in the boxes, nor in the bags. I opened one and pulled out a wad of notes. They were still wet, but so was the ink they'd been printed with. It was fake, all of it! The whole job had been a waste of time.

I flopped back onto the sand, exhausted. I didn't even have the energy to get mad, or feel sorry for my dead crew mates. It all seemed to wash over me like the waves lapping up onto the beach. I couldn't even begin to figure out who it had been who had sold us out, but someone obviously had.

With my last ounce of strength I pulled out my phone and called my mechanic. I ordered up my favourite car, the Dewbauchee JB 700.

"We'll have to leave town," I said to Jane.

"Shame," she said.

"Actually we'll have to leave the state, I doubt we'd be able to get out of the country though."

"Well, I was starting to get a little tired of this place anyway," smiled Jane.

When I heard my car pull up on the road above us we walked over to it. By the time we got there the mechanic had already gone, off on some other job probably. We got inside. The familiar feel and sound of the engine seemed to sooth me. I put her in gear and pulled away, onto the highway. I'd drive as far away as I could and find some new place to settle down, I thought. I wondered if I'd ever see this place again. Maybe one day, I thought, but probably not for a while.

THE END


End file.
